BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (R) ****

 

Directed by Ang Lee. 134 minutes.

Starring Heath Ledger, Jake Gylenhaal, Michelle Williams, Randy Quaid, Anna Farris, Anne Hathaway and Linda Cardellini. Released by Focus Features.

 

Brokeback Mountain begins like any other western: a quiet lone man rides into town, keeping his hat low, just looking for work. But, the time is the 1960s and the cowboy is in the hills of Wyoming and not the Old West. His name is Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger), a good-looking man in his 20s, whose parents were killed in a car accident and whose siblings have kicked him out of their homes after they were married. Ennis meets another cowboy while waiting to get instructions from his future employer, Joe Aguirre (nice touch),  played by Randy Quaid. The other cowboy, whom we first see pulling up in a battered old truck, then shaving and pretending not to look at Ennis through his truck’s mirror, is Jack Twist- also good-looking. He wants to be a bull rider in the rodeo, but his father won’t teach him the ropes.

 

Jack and Ennis are given a deceptively simple job: watch Aguirre’s sheep through the summer into the fall, and making sure they are not eaten by coyotes. A couple weeks into the job, Jack begins to complain about the “four hour commute,” which involves his taking the sheep out, riding back, going back to check on them, riding back to camp for food and then riding back out to sleep with the sheep at night. The two men decide not to sleep with the flock, but instead camp together. One cold night, they decide to do more than that.

 

Brokeback Mountain is a love story, directed gracefully by Ang Lee, a director whose repertoire knows no boundaries. He has directed two Cantonese dramas, a romantic martial arts epic, a fierce drama about 1970s infidelity, a civil war western, a comic book film and a Jane Austen adaptation. Now, we have, as people are calling it, his “gay cowboy movie.” But, don’t be suckered into thinking this label sums up this haunting adaptation by Larry McMurtry of E. Annie Proulx’s short story- you would be doing the film and yourself a great disservice. Brokeback Mountain is an moving love story full of heartbreak, longing, romance, great performances, breathtaking cinematography, timeliness and great storytelling. It is as epic in its scope as Giant or Gone with the Wind.

 

The film tracks Ennis and Jack through about 30 some odd years of their lives, including their marriages to Michelle Williams (in a breakthrough supporting performance) and Anne Hathaway, respectively, children, jobs and long-standing hidden relationship. Every several months they meet to go “fishing,” though Ennis’ wife, at one point, asks him why he never catches any fish and his line has never been used. It should come as no surprise to her, though, after she witnesses their first reunion after four years earlier in the film.

 

The film is deeply sad, not just for the ending of the film. It is easy to sympathize for each character and feel their heartbreak: Williams for marrying a man whom she loves, but for whom she will never be the love of his life; Ennis’ children who only know their inward father from outward appearances; and, of course, Jack and Ennis’ tragic love. In 1963, when the two men first meet, the word “gay” is still a code word, and the two men can only play out their relationship in the confines of the mountains where they take their fishing trips. Ennis relates a story to Jack of how, as a boy, his father once made him witness the corpse of a dead man who had shacked up with another cowboy. He knows his relationship with Jack will never be accepted- not in Wyoming, not in 1963 or even the early 1980s, where the film culminates.

 

Lee’s film is a powerful one, and I think one of his successes is playing the love story no differently than a Hollywood epic would; Jack and Ennis are not “gay” or “straight”- they are just two people in love. Lee uses the relationship of the two men to show how scattered moments during a lifetime can define one’s life. As a director, Lee continues to prove he is one of the finest directors working today. As far as performances, this year has been the one where Jake Gylenhaal has really broken through in several films, and this is his best one yet. Williams is especially good, her best moment occurring when she finally reveals her knowledge of the men’s relationship to her husband. Hathaway is plucky at first, but then shows a remarkably cool detachment after her relationship with Jack becomes more of a business deal, And then, there is Heath Ledger. What a performance. He has taken some daring roles where he has excelled before, such as Monster’s Ball, but nothing could prepare me for his work here. Reminding me of a young Paul Newman in Hud, or even a young Brando, Ledger pours his heart and soul into Ennis, and we get one of the best performances of the year and the best performance of the young actor’s career so far.

 

Brokeback Mountain is a movie that is being talked about a lot right now. With gay marriage still at the forefront of controversial political topics and the Vatican’s refusal to accept gay priests, the film is a landmark in a time when Hollywood has decided not to play it safe any longer (see: Syriana, Good Night and Good Luck, Munich). But the real reason people should be talking for hours on end about Ang Lee’s romantic western is because of how damn good it is.