You may think you know something about the new Ang Lee film, "Brokeback Mountain." Maybe you've seen the trailer and, depending on your point of view, either snickered derisively or decided to go see it on the day it comes out. Maybe you've heard it referred to as the "Gay Cowboy" flick, or read about the acclaim it's received. Whatever you have heard, however, I implore you: Judge this one for yourself. It's too good and too important to rely simply on hearsay.
The film, as adapted by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana from Annie Proulx's short story, plays out in two very different acts. Act I takes place on the title mountain itself, where Ennis (Heath Ledger) and Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) meet when the two are hired to work as ranch-hands. It's 1963 in the fictional town of Signal, Wyo., and the two are just looking to make some summer money and then go off and live their lives. Turns out, though, that the job is lonely up there in the mountains; Jack and Ennis only have each other, and they become friends. One night, though, it gets unusually cold, and the two have one tent to share and, well, they realize that being friends just isn't quite enough for them. They begin an affair, but the two dare not speak of it. "It's a one-shot thing we got goin' here," says Ennis, though both Jack and Ennis clearly wish that wasn't true. They both know that they must soon descend from on high, both literally and figuratively.
Neither Ennis nor Jack really wants to leave Brokeback, however, and the audience doesn't want to either. We get soaring vistas of the beauty and majesty of the Rockies as Gustavo Santaolalla's sparse, captivating score twangs away. We get the sense that up there, close to the sky, nothing can ever sully the friendship or the intimacy between the two men; it's timeless. The Brokeback sequences represent a remarkable directorial feat, in that Lee gives the story both an epic and an intimate feel. Because of this effect, if you are tempted to wait for this film on DVD, don't.
Of course, as Olivia Newton-John sang in "Grease," "It turned colder, and that's where it ends..." and summer must give way to fall. With the change of seasons, Jack and Ennis must part ways. Since the two men recognize the difference between what is acceptable atop Brokeback and what's OK down in the cities of the American West, the two men cannot exchange addresses or phone numbers, but instead part with Ennis's laconic "Well, see you around, I guess."
What happens in the second act I will not divulge, but suffice it to say that they do find ways to reunite despite Ennis' marriage to his sweetheart Alma (an excellent Michelle Williams, of "Dawson's Creek" fame) and Jack's settling down with a wealthy Texas rodeo girl named Lureen (played by another teenybopper fave, Anne Hathaway of "The Princess Diaries").
It is Ledger who really takes over the film here; he bottles up his feelings and expresses them in so many other ways, and the performance is remarkable. His Ennis was never garrulous, but now each word appears as if it has to be ripped from his mouth, while his wife, children and even people he meets in bars are always on notice for an impending outburst. It is excruciating to see the years pass with both men's marriages and personal lives slowly melting under the heat of the Jack-Ennis flame that continues to burn. But, as the song goes, those summer days have drifted away, and they are never to return.
One glaring flaw is the way the film is so specifically dated in the second half of the film. With each year that passes, we get new hairstyles for the ladies and new clothes for the men; it feels as if a bit of that "Forrest Gump" tour through the '60s and '70s has been plopped into the wrong film. The timeless quality of the first half is gone, and since we are now in such a specific time and place, are we to suppose that Jack and Ennis would have a more fulfilling relationship now, in 2005? Has America — especially the West — changed to the point where two gay cowboys can live their days together happily ever after?
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