A Moving Film About Love and Regret

Rating: 8/10 (29 March 2011)

This movie is beautiful. It paints a nuanced and heady landscape of fear, love, social unease, anger, and most of all - the pain of knowing that you could have had something wonderful and you didn't step up and own it.
You can see some parallels b/w the story of Jack and Ennis and Li Mu Bai and Yu Shu Lien in another of Ang Lee's understated love stories, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. In both films we see two people who are drawn together by a deep soul-felt bond of love, but hesitant to embrace it fully because of the societal constraints they follow.
You can approve or disapprove with the characters' choices in life, and this film shows you plenty of reasons for either. Both men are married and have families and we see the pain, especially in Ennis' case of how infidelity hurts all around it including the men responsible. But though you may judge, you still feel the strength of the bond between these two men...feel the sense of pure freedom the mountain gives them. It transcends many things.
The acting, all round, is superb. The cinematography is open, bare, and grand. The story paced perfectly.
A great, sad, moving film that will move anyone...ANYONE...who has felt soulful longing and love that for whatever reason was never given a real shot. Whatever your "orientation," whatever your beliefs, you should still see this as it WILL move you...and echo in you the way great art always does.