I Want My Moneyback Mountain (Warning: Spoiler potential)

Rating: 3/10 (3 January 2006)

Brokeback Mountain was, at best, an average movie. The acting is believable and Ang Lee's camera certainly captures the breadth and grandeur of the local landscape. The story, however, falls away to vapor amidst the gratuitous homosexuality and the film's failure to realize that viewers appreciate realism. The film abandons realism at key junctures merely to satisfy the plot, which, if you know anything about writing and plotting, is a big no-no. What do I mean?
For the first twenty minutes of the film, we witness two young cowboys herding sheep in the Wyoming Rockies and cautiously becoming friends. The only speck of build-up to a sense of sexual tension is a superfluously hazy nude scene of Ennis (Ledger's character) washing his man equipment while Jack (Gyllenhaal's character) cooks beans and steals barely perceptible peripheral glances. Apart from that, all that happens that suggests some form of evolution from just friendship is when Jack pats a cloth to a head wound Ennis has sustained, only to have Ennis immediately take the cloth and take care of it himself.
A little more sheep herding ensues, an elk kill to avoid another night of beans, and exchanges of benign banter. Next thing you know, Ennis and Jack are inside a tent clawing passionately at their drive-in movie screen belt buckles to strip them off. Huh? Were we to just assume that an undeniable attraction had been engendered between them? One moment engaged in the manly acts of herding, hunting, and stuffing down beans, the next lascivious sin in the tent? Sorry, it doesn't work. With virtually no build-up whatsoever to the tent tryst, the viewer is left wondering what exactly the precipitating motivators were. Because both were lonely, shy, awkward cow pokes? Not good enough. Not strong enough. The movie nosedived here and never recovered.
The realism was further assaulted when Jack first came to visit Ennis after four long years of separation and silence. I realize Ennis was not meant to be the brightest filament in the chandelier. But, c'mon, is it truly believable that he would ravage Jack at the bottom of the steps that lead up to the front door of his apartment, especially with his wife and children right inside? Did unbridled passion cause Ennis to forget that doors can be opened and windows peeked through? No. Simply, they needed a way for Ennis's wife (Michelle Williams) to find out, so the tension of her knowing the secret could play out, and ultimately lead to the demise of the marriage.
The problem with this is that we are expected to overlook and/or forgive a great deal. Maybe you could, but I could not. Also, manufacturing tension for nothing more than the sake of there being tension is never as effective as when tension naturally occurs from good writing. Not the case here. Everything, especially the way Ennis's wife learns about him and Jack, feels contrived and nothing more than a succession of plot band aids.
Another issue I had is that the movie is billed as a prolific love story. A love story typically implies that two people are, more or less, equally and madly in love with each other. If you take some time, though, to really analyze the behavior of both characters, you begin to realize that the love is far more palpable in Ennis than in Jack. Ennis is the lonely, dumb, pathetic sort. I believe that his relationship with Jack was more about the bond than about the homosexuality.
For Jack, however, it can be safely discerned that his primary motivation was more about the homosexuality and less about the bond. Jack was more the bona fide homosexual. Ennis was a just a lost, lonely sad sack who could have just as easily fallen in love with one of the sheep he was herding as with Jack. I don't say that in the context of mockery or crudeness, but rather to demonstrate that Ennis was a vulnerable, sullen soul who was oblivious to just how desperate he was to love and be loved. Jack, the more free spirited of the two, was simply in the right place at the right time to unlock this torturous yearning in Ennis.
Jack, however, had no problem having his little benders down to Mexico for interim quickies with homosexuals-for-sale. He also didn't seem to think about Ennis when he tried to pick up a guy at a bar or set to romping with his wife's friend's husband (although that affair was more implied than confirmed). So, was this truly a love story? Or was it one poor fool in love and another willing to drive several hundred miles each way, once a month eventually, to satisfy his homosexual hunger?
One mildly touching aspect, and perhaps the high point, of the film is Ennis's seemingly incurable loneliness. You can't help but feel sorry for the guy, especially when he loses the one thing in his life that brought him any semblance of true happiness. The ending scene with him standing there surveying the emptiness of his trailer is actually pretty profound. If there is a redeeming virtue to this film, it is Ennis's prevailing sadness, and Ledger's portrayal of it.
The ending, though, like the majority of the film, is formulaic and unfulfilling. I went along on the ride, I expected a more satisfying payoff.
While some will label this film revolutionary, those who trudge past the hype and are willing to see the film for what it really is will realize that 'revolutionary' is an inaccurate description. Rather, this movie is an inharmonious mating of The Horse Whisperer and Philadelphia.
Oh, and is it too much to ask that one of the *professionals* who edited this film might have caught that Leger's portrayal of an unrefined cowboy sounded disturbingly akin to Karl from Sling Blade?