Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain definitely isn’t your typical cowboy movie. It begins by following Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) as they herd sheep through the wilderness of Montana in the early 1960s, but what happens between them on Brokeback Mountain changes their lives forever. Their bond of friendship turns into that of love as they fight off the elements, threats to their flock of sheep, food shortages, and even each other. Whatever expectations one might have going into this movie can be thrown out, because this is no typical romance.
It is an unusual love story, in that unlike films where two characters who are searching for true love have to overcome some kind of everyday difference like an age gap, distance from each other, or differing cultures, Ennis and Jack struggle against their own American culture and against the conception that homosexuality is to be abhorred. Throughout the movie there are a few others who figure out Ennis and Jack’s secret, and the depressing reaction to it is consistently callous yet muted disapproval.
Ennis and Jack deal with this in very different ways. Jack deals with his newfound sexual orientation by trying to ignore it while he and Ennis are apart. He starts a family with Lureen Newsome (Anne Hathaway), the daughter of a rich farming equipment dealer. At first his life seems happy enough, but as time progresses, years of living a false life take their toll and he finds himself being pushed around by others who have found they can take advantage of his lack of self-confidence and depression.
For Ennis, the cause of his struggle stemmed from seeing the consequences of public homosexuality among fellow cowboys, one of whom was brutally murdered due to his lifestyle. As Ennis said, “I wasn’t nine years old. My daddy, he made sure me and my brother seen it. Hell, for all I know, he done the job.”
Heath Ledger’s performance as Ennis is the stuff of film history. We watch him trudge through the five stages of grief in the aftermath of Ennis’ and Jack’s blooming passion. Denial mixes with anger as he locks his agonizing secret deep inside him and continues on with the life he had. This soon crumbles beneath him as the weight of his secret becomes too much to bear when Jack enters his life again. We watch his melancholy struggle continue his life and his relationship with Jack, all the while trying to avoid the awful consequences of this love becoming public.
The audience sees Ennis tortured by the inner conflict between what his heart tells him is right and what his father and society have told him to be wrong. What is so depressing for both him and the audience is that this beautiful love poisons the rest of his life. The two fight to regain the carefree passion attained that first time on Brokeback Mountain throughout the entire movie, but they can never leave everything else behind to make it work because of the inhibitions ingrained in them by their culture.
What makes this movie work so well is that the audience agonizes with Ennis and Jack all the way through. The movie never confronts the audience on what its views are on homosexuality; it never asks us to judge the two cowboys and their love. We want these two to unite and live happily ever after, but at the same time, we don’t want them to suffer the wrath of a society whose disapproval threatens the very foundation of their love. I found Brokeback Mountain to be poignant and deeply moving. Both Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal give awe-inspiring performances that are Oscar-worthy. I highly suggest this film to anyone open-minded enough to sit down in a theater. Let go of what society, religion, or your parents tell you is right or wrong, and watch two people fall in love. It is truly beautiful.
