"Brokeback" - Between the two horizons, the greatest love story ever told

Rating: 10/10 (4 April 2006)

"Old Brokeback got us good and it sure ain't over."

Jack Twist, "Brokeback Mountain" (2005)

Brokeback Mountain "Brokeback Mountain" gets us good too.
As a straight African-American male, I never thought I'd be showering praise over a movie about two cowboys in love with one another. Regardless of one's political leanings or religious convictions, it's hard to not find "Brokeback Mountain" to be a dark, painful journey of love and affection. It's been billed as a "gay cowboy movie" but that's just a "cruel simplification" - Roger Ebert. To me, they aren't gay but are in fact very much straight, and hopelessly, desperately in love with each other.
Most would think Hollywood has lost its mind by electing Taiwanese filmmaker Ang Lee to adapt E. Annie Proulx's short story, which first appeared in The New Yorker in 1997 and has won dozens of awards including the prestigious O. Henry Prize, to the big screen. But upon closer inspection, Lee is perhaps the most qualified person for the job since his career has been made by showcasing people trying to function outside the norms of their society.
Beginning in the summer of 1963, Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) are the two ranch hands hired by Joe Aguirre (Randy Quaid) to herd sheep on Wyoming's Brokeback Mountain range. Both men seem to be opposites, though the only thing they really share in common is the fact that they're both around the ripe age of 20. Ennis has lived with a troubling memory since boyhood in which one of two men living in an old shack was found beaten to death. Ennis's father had conditioned him and his brother to hate homosexuals; the irony is, to hate gays, he would be forced hate himself. Still for all he knows, his father did it.
Ennis is of so few words that Jack is able brag that when he relates the story of how he was raised by his brother and sister and when they went off to get married, he was left by himself. Jack is a rodeo rider with little or no family ties, and seems more able to face the fact that he may be inescapably gay and in love with Ennis. For Ennis, it's more difficult.
While on old Brokeback, the two go about their chores, herding the sheep, eating cans of beans on end, and spending lonely nights on opposite ends of the range. So when the two get pissy drunk one night, they passionately, almost violently have sex. The next morning, they're frank: Ennis says, "You know I ain't queer" to which Jack replies, "Me neither." Of course in the big picture, that's exactly what they are.
At the end of the summer, they part ways and the most they can get out of one another are generic send-offs like "Like what are you doing later?" and such. Before arriving on Brokeback, Ennis was already engaged to Alma (Michelle Williams) and upon his return they get married and have children. Jack continues rodeo riding and meets the pretty Lureen (Anne Hathaway), who's the daughter of a rich farm equipment salesman and they have children of their own.
I don't need to hint upon the controversy surrounding "Brokeback Mountain" and its suspicious loss of Best Picture at the Oscars earlier this year. Watching this, I got the strong feeling that somehow that neither man is "gay" in the sense we know - they don't know themselves, and I don't either really (so excuse my earlier presumptions) - and the movie makes it abundantly clear to us the audience.
Take away the two men in love theme, you're stuck with just two people sharing a forbidden relationship over the course of a lifetime, but don't know why they're in love. I recall last year about some of the marketing strategies for theatrical posters and Ang Lee and his team suggested riffing on "Titanic" (1997) and other classic romances - just with Ledger and Gyllenhaal sharing the title. Had the story been about a heterosexual couple from a different cultural, ethnic or religious background, I doubt the film would have received as much praise or controversy.
The cinematography really makes the wide, open area of Brokeback Mountain shine and glisten and provide the characters and us with an overwhelming sense of freedom, as Ennis and Jack sometimes retreat there on "fishing trips," reliving that special summer from '63. Both Alma and Lureen get suspicious that neither of their husbands bring back any fish on these "trips." But both men embrace passionately after long absences from each other's company, and that makes this love much more powerful.
The script by Larry McCurtry and Diana Ossana puts Proulx's short story under a microscope and highlights the love, pain, and despair of this great forbidden love between these two fellows who are in love and don't know what to do with it, much less try to remain happy in their separate marriages to kind and caring wives.
There is something about one of the film's closing scenes, where Ennis retreats to Jack's family's house and goes up to his bedroom. We get to see Ennis reclaim a piece of their time together and "Brokeback Mountain" seems to end on a note of optimism, something I really think the E. Annie Proulx short story opted out of. But between the two horizons, "Brokeback Mountain" may very well be the greatest love story ever told to a mass audience.
10/10