Brokeback Mountain

Spanning approximately twenty years beginning in 1967, this is a story of the forbidden love between two ‘cowboys’ in Wyoming. Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis (Heath Ledger) meet when they are both posted to a sheep minding job on Brokeback Mountain. The job that lasts for several months involves one of them sleeping with the sheep looking after them, and the other minding the camp (located a two hour horse ride away) and doing the cooking—keeping house essentially. Severe isolation and a helping hand from Jack leads Ennis into Jack’s arms one night (actually, the scene wasn’t nearly that romantic—it was rough and very macho). And so begins an exquisitely beautiful and deeply tragic romance between the two men.

Both men return once the season is over to ‘normal lives’ of marriage, fatherhood and providing for their families. After a four year absence, they meet again and rekindle their relationship in secret—something they decide to continue two or three times a year. Jack wants more. He is a romantic and believes they can make it work if they just ‘get a ranch together’. Ennis is more practical. He feels society’s eyes on him and fears the consequences if they are ever discovered. It is the classic Hollywood love story in that it explores that ‘will they ever be together?’ tension. Clearly Ang Lee decided to make the gay lovers ‘cowboys’—you could not think of a more macho occupation, particularly in that era—to intensify the difficulties the lovers would encounter.

The storyline was relatively original; the scenery was stunning and the music was perfectly suited. I think, however, that it was the superb acting from both lead characters that made this an extraordinarily powerful movie experience. The unbearable angst felt by Innys as he attempts to resolve his actions with everything he has learnt about ‘being a man’ would have been frustrating to watch if it were not for Heath Ledger’s tenderness. Even more unbearable was Jack Twist’s broken heart. The depth of feeling that Gyllenhaal conveyed as a suffocated and oppressed young man overflowing with love and hungry for it to be reciprocated was painful to watch because he made me feel his sadness and heartbreak.