One of film's best love stories. End of sentence.

Rating: 10/10 (22 January 2006)

I went to see this film at a late show in a theatre in southern Ontario. The audience was a mixed group: a few older couples, some big groups of teenagers (who were audibly awkward during the one or two sex scenes) and a few singles. I smiled a little at the single guys in the audience, remembering a comment that "Brokeback Mountain" isn't really a date movie, and it's certainly not the kind of movie a guy can go see on his own, or with his close friend, and so men might not go see the film at all. This in an article questioning the film's ability to make good box office.
Anyway, the film was beautifully shot (all those mountains and rivers and trees made me a little homesick for BC), well-acted and nicely understated in its material and intellectual choices. It's probably one of the best movie romances I've ever seen, and I really appreciated the way the screenplay didn't dodge the ripples of pain and heartbreak caused by Jack and Ennis' relationship, while still managing to spell out that the love affair should have and would have turned out well, if this were a better world. This wasn't a didactic film by any means, for better and for worse. And it's not exactly the film that those easy "gay cowboy movie" labels would have you believe.
This was a Western in the most traditional sense, about emotionally-strangled men who are more at home on the range than they are in their own skin. The gay love affair, so honestly and gently handled by Ang Lee, builds to a slow burn of longing and is deeply steeped in the misery of lost years. This trope is familiar to Westerns (men forsake or lose the one woman who might make them happy through a combination of circumstance and their own nature) and I suppose one can easily (and dismissively) argue that the only reason people are interested in "Brokeback" at all is because it offers a new spin on this old idea. However, by the film's sad, quiet conclusion, I couldn't shake the idea that I'd seen something new, not just an old pairing with a new orientation, but a new take on the West, on masculinity and on dramatic storytelling. The film is subtle but it works, and I hope people who wouldn't normally go see a "gay cowboy movie" might check this one out. Even if you have to go see it alone.