Salt Lake Tribune Review
Take "Brokeback Mountain" on its own terms, stripped of its critical accolades and the "controversy" over its storyline about two cowboys in a homosexual relationship.
On the one hand, it's a Western, as steeped in the traditions of that genre -- rugged individualism, stoic endurance, the yearning for wide-open spaces and a place to call home -- as any movie in which John Wayne saddled up. On the other hand, it's a classic movie romance, which by definition is tragic and melancholy.
Take those threads together, as director
Ang Lee does so beautifully, and you have a movie whose timeless, heartbreaking beauty will remain long after the political pundits and Oscar prognosticators have had their say.
The movie begins in Wyoming, 1963. A sheep rancher (
Randy Quaid) hires two unemployed ranch hands, Ennis Del Mar (
Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (
Jake Gyllenhaal) to tend his large herd as they graze on BLM land near Brokeback Mountain. The job requires them to camp alone for the summer, their only outside contact a weekly supply delivery.
The taciturn Ennis and the garrulous Jack grow into close friends and, ultimately, sexual partners. The sex scenes, laid out with spartan beauty by screenwriters
Larry McMurtry and
Diana Ossana (adapting Annie Proulx's short story), are simultaneously tender, rough and awkward. These are men who never use the word "love," but they feel it -- along with the burden of knowing that everyone else, and everything they were raised to believe, would call it shameful and wrong.
The summer ends and they try to move on. Ennis marries his high-school sweetheart, Alma (
Michelle Williams), while Jack moves to Texas and weds a rich daddy's girl, Lurene (
Anne Hathaway). In spite of marriage and children and everything else, the pull of their love brings them back, year after year, to Brokeback Mountain.
The movie doesn't aim for grand pronouncements or melodramatic overkill. Director
Ang Lee ("Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"), while lavishing care on the sweeping Western landscapes, follows the model of restraint that Ledger brings in his wrenching portrayal of Ennis. Ennis isn't one to waste words -- he's a cowboy in the real sense -- and Lee, the writers and the excellent cast (Gyllenhaal, Williams and
Linda Cardellini as a brassy waitress are heartbreaking in their roles) match that sensibility.
It's in small gestures and telling details -- how Ennis lets loose a smile for Jack, how Lurene handles a difficult phone call, and many more -- that "Brokeback Mountain" weaves its magic. We feel this movie's heart, even if it doesn't wear that heart on its sleeve. That's just the cowboy way.
-- Sean P. Means
The rundown: Two cowboys fall in love -- but, of course, it's not that simple in this heartbreakingly beautiful drama.
Synopsis: Early one morning in Signal, Wyoming, Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist meet while lining up for employment with local rancher Joe Aguirre. The world which Ennis and Jack have been born into is, at once, changing rapidly and yet scarcely evolving. Both young men seem certain of their set places in the heartland--obtaining steady work, marrying, and raising a family--and yet they hunger for something beyond what they can articulate. When Aguirre dispatches them to work as sheepherders up on the majestic Brokeback Mountain, they gravitate towards camaraderie and then a deeper intimacy. At summer''s end, the two must come down from Brokeback and part ways. Remaining in Wyoming, Ennis weds his sweetheart Alma, with whom he will have two daughters as he ekes out a living. Jack, in Texas, catches the eye of rodeo queen Lureen Newsome. Their courtship and marriage result in a son, as well as jobs in her father''s business. Four years pass. One day, Alma brings Ennis a postcard from Jack, who is en route to visit Wyoming. Ennis waits expectantly for his friend, and when Jack at last arrives, in just one moment it is clear that the passage of time has only strengthened the men''s attachment. In the years that follow, Ennis and Jack struggle to keep their secret bond alive. They meet up several times annually. Even when they are apart, they face the eternal questions of fidelity, commitment, and trust. Ultimately, the one constant in their lives is a force of nature--love.
