Movies |
Brokeback Mountain
directed by Ang Lee
By
Published: Jan 01, 2006
Category:
Drama
Brokeback Mountain
directed by Ang Lee
The story of two cowboys who fall in love in Wyoming in 1963 and dare not tell a soul is frankly told — and light years from gay porn. Indeed, the frisson of seeing Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal go at it fades fast. The tragedy of love hidden, love denied, sticks with you long after the movie ends.
My wife and I left the theater in silence, thinking the same thing: the unfairness — the criminal stupidity, really — of one set of people presuming to pass judgment on another. Those who are all riled up about gays and ‘gay rights’ seem to think that homosexuality is only about sex. But for Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist in ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ their sexuality is a curse, a jail sentence: life in solitary, with infrequent, secret conjugal visits.
This is the movie’s power — the ability to make you feel the way sex opens the door to our souls. And the terrible price of two decades of desire and guilt, loneliness and recrimination. Ennis and Jack want the sex, but even more, they want the relationship, the dailiness of romantic partnership.
Jack dreams of how it could be. Ennis won’t let himself go there; he knows how the story of two ranchers, living together, ends in the West. “If you can’t fix it, you got to stand it,” Ennis says, and you have to admire the rugged cowboy wisdom that makes him affirm a miserable reality instead of embracing a deadly dream.
The surprise of the film, for many, will be how the gay aspect is the least of it. The love story — a universal story known to all who can’t, for whatever reason, be with the one they crave — is what grabs you, and holds you, and makes this one of the most memorable film experiences of a lifetime.
To buy the DVD of ‘Brokeback Mountain’ from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy Annie Proulx’s short story in her book, ‘Close Range: Wyoming Stories,’ click here.
To buy the soundtrack CD from Amazon.com, click here.
