Brokeback Mountain, 2005

This coming from a guy who actually had to turn away during the love scenes, this movie was truly great. By now you've surely heard all the gay cowboy jokes that this movie spawned, but putting those aside, this movie has so much depth that you'll be thinking about it for days after you're done. If you've read other reviews, you'll know this is kind of a sad movie. But if you asked me what the sad part in the movie is... I couldn't tell you. The sad part is the entire movie. It lives a bitter taste in your mouth because you know how real it is. The director doesn't try to sugar things up and make everything okay before you leave the theater. He represents reality, the world we live in, and it's up to you to decide if that's thew way it should be.

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Its a forbidden love...for these two people who desperately want to be together..but can't...for the fear of being judged, for not being accepted by the society.But their affair continues in secrecy over the years.Amazing performance by Late Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.

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As reported on TV, the actual title was "Brokeback Mountain, TMAGC". Calling it just "Brokeback Mountain" was of course a marketing ploy to draw in unsuspecting moviegoers wanting to see a sweeping, picturesque love story from the American West, where rugged sons of the frontier, like the Marlboro Man, once freely roamed. However, to be fair, even though they weren't _regular cowboys_, they smoked manly cigarettes throughout the movie, so the advertising wasn't entirely false. Come to think of it, the movie _was_ a sweeping, picturesque love story from the American West. But, the cowboys weren't exactly roaming free. They worked for this guy, who put all sorts of rules on where they could go, and what they could do, and he decided whether and how much they'd get paid. As I said, they were _not regular cowboys_, no real sons of the frontier. There's now all this hype about this big Hollywood romantic epic. Not that I like these chick-flicks, but, if you gotta see one of those, there's no reason to pick one that's also tragic, is there? But the tragedy in this movie makes sense somehow. Maybe because it's not about _regular cowboys_. Hmmm...that Annie Proulx sure wrote a compelling story. I'll never think of cowboys in the same way again. Ang Lee has indeed made "a great American love story" that deserves a place among the best Hollywood romances. You can take my word for it, because my senses had to labor to accomodate this movie, just like they usually do when in the midst of a Hollywood movie experience. It's duly impeccable and heartfelt, with superlative performances...BTW, it was Heath Ledger's excellent performance that sustained my senses through the two-plus hours of not-so-unearned emotion. This genre doesn't do much for me, but the movie stayed with me despite that. Honestly, I'm not sure if I wanted to run out of the theater because it was predictably depressing or depressingly predictable. This movie ain't bad, but I'm not sure I liked it.

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Brokeback Mountain is an emotionally powered success, creating the kind of sympathy for its main characters that most movies only tell us we should feel. At times the pacing may feel too slow for its own good, lingering on one silent moment too many, but it is those seemingly boring melancholic silences that help the movie deliver its promised release. The story (adapted from Annie Proulx's short story) revolves around two cowboys of 20th century kind, Enis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal). They first meet in the early sixties, both looking for work as hired help herding ship. Their love story drives the film through 20 years. The movie has been called a gay western, being set in the vast plains of Wyoming and Texas, but these cowboys are not the gun drawing John Wayne Clint Eastwood kind. The similarity is in the kind of loneliness that the mythical American cowboy used to wear as a badge of honor. They are constantly fighting with themselves to understand what they want and how to achieve it without losing their dignity. The movie is an endurance test for a permanent American icon, as permanent as the Brokeback of the title. Enis and Jack are being tested to see how long they can stand the silencing of their emotions to the outside world. By the end of the movie you understand the tragedy those silent moments have embodied.

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