By now everybody's heard of the "gay cowboy" movie. Director Ang Lee depicts the love story between two ranch hands the way other films treat heterosexual romance, without explicit agenda. Though the public may never mention Brokeback Mountain without those two key words, the film is actually about the nature of impossible love.
The story is relatively simple. The movie opens in 1963. Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) meet one summer on Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming, when they both find work guarding sheep. Isolated in the wilderness, the two develop a strong friendship, then a love affair. Ennis is the typical stoic, a man of few words, while Jack, a rodeo rider, is more forward and impulsive.
Their relationship, primarily because they are both men, runs into major problems. The 1960s West is directly hostile to the idea of a homosexual relationship. Ennis has a fiancée, Alma (Michelle Williams) waiting for him when the job is over. Jack also finds a wife (Anne Hathaway) to conform to society's expectations.
The film tells Ennis and Jack's story in a straightforward and realistic manner, simply following their relationship together and apart over the years. Director Ang Lee sets the story in the gorgeous West and repeats one particular guitar-based theme throughout the soundtrack, creating a peaceful backdrop for the movie.
Tracking the two men's lifetimes over 20 plus years, the film follows Jack and Ennis through lifeless marriages, the constant struggle of keeping their relationship secret and long absences from each other. The time they do spend together on Brokeback Mountain is always short but sweet -- a break from reality.
At its core, Brokeback Mountain is simply a forbidden love story. The plot is relatively predictable; the real focus of the movie is the two main characters. Both the lead actors are effective; they show their affectionate and passionate relationship without resorting to overacting. Ledger's Ennis is a strong and silent man with an intense underlying temper that emerges as he struggles to balance the obligations of a hollow marriage, and a homosexual love affair. Gyllenhaal's Jack is more single-minded: He is willing to leave his family and reject societal consequences to be with Ennis.
We follow the longtime hardships and conflicts of the characters, but the emotional impact of the movie comes late. In the moment, the film's conclusion seems somehow a tad dispassionate and hands-off.
At first, audiences may crave a heavier emotional impact. On further reflection, however, the protagonists' constant loneliness and pain is striking. Jack and Ennis' conflicted relationship is best demonstrated with the former's exclamation, "I wish I knew how to quit you!" The two only ever feel a genuine connection with each other, but being together for life is virtually impossible.
Brokeback Mountain is more than a movie about gay cowboys -- it tells a tranquilly moving story about two people who never feel complete without each other, but who must live with that perpetual emptiness.
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