An effective psychological study of a man so afraid of revealing emotions that he nearly implodes due to his inability to express himself.

Rating: 9/10 (3 July 2010)

The film is that rare thing, a big Hollywood weeper with a beautiful ache at its centre. It's a modern-day Western that turns into a quietly revolutionary love story. Wyoming, 1963: two young male ranchhards (Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal) enter into a relationship while tending sheep on a mountain, and find it hard to adjust to married reality once they come down off the hillside.
Brokeback Mountain is a major achievement, but a supremely delicate piece of film-making, sensitive to a particular moment, place, set of attitudes, even to those viewers who might be left queasy by the thought of two cowboys sharing more than just a tent. Director Ang Lee gets performances of staggering maturity from his young cast, and the prevailing mood is exceptionally vivid: time passes by under vast blue skies, sweeping the characters further and further away from a brief instant of happiness.