Brokeback Mountain - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution movie review

'Brokeback Mountain' is a pure original

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

You've probably already heard all about "Brokeback Mountain." The movie about the gay caballeros. Homos on the range. Yippie ki yi gay.

Whatever.

People so inclined can make all the dumb jokes they want, but "Brokeback Mountain" remains a significant film and one definitely worth your time.

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'Brokeback Mountain'

The verdict: Flawed but groundbreaking — and beautifully done.

Director: Ang Lee
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Heath Ledger, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway, Randy Quaid
Run time: 134 minutes
Release date: Dec. 9, 2005
Rating: R for sexuality, nudity, language and some violence.
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That said, it's not quite the movie it wants to be. Though impeccably acted by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, under Ang Lee's solid direction, "Brokeback Mountain" is, nonetheless, overlong and, just as some hetero couples lack chemistry on screen, the same is true here. While they are believable as men in love, Ledger and Gyllenhaal just don't strike sparks off each other.

Based on a short story by Annie Proulx that ran in The New Yorker, "Brokeback Mountain" is the story of two men who fall in love and spend the next several decades trying to be together — as much as possible, that is, in a culture where a gay man and a tire iron were considered a natural match.

Outgoing rodeo cowboy Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal) and taciturn ranch hand Ennis Del Mar (Ledger) meet in the summer of 1963 when they're both hired by crusty rancher Randy Quaid to tend his sheep on Wyoming's Brokeback Mountain. One cold rainy night, they share the small tent and suddenly they're having passionate lusty-men sex.

The next day, they try to pretend it never happened. "You know, I ain't queer," Ennis says.

"Me neither," bristles Jack.

Maybe not, but they're certainly in love with each other and the rest of their Brokeback summer is spent horsing around like young lovers and having sex like crazy.

Come September and it's Reality Check time. The two part and, as far as most of America is concerned, do the right thing — get married and have kids. Ennis hitches up with sweet lovestruck Alma (Michelle Williams, very good) and barely scrapes by. Meanwhile, Jack hits the jackpot with rich, pretty Daddy's Girl, Lureen (Anne Hathaway, even better). Her father disapproves — mightily — but marriage is a way better option for Jack than making failed passes at rodeo clowns.

But after some years pass, Jack and Ennis begin seeing each other again. For the next several decades they take "fishing trips" to their beloved Brokeback Mountain. Sort of like the old Alan Alda/Ellen Burstyn film, "Same Time, Next Year," but with guys. (Now there's an idea for a Broadway revival.)

"Brokeback Mountain" is a love story, but that's not all it is. In some ways, the movie is as much about the way we were as the way they are. Jack and Ennis live in fear of discovery in a Reagan World that considers them in the same league as pedophiles. Surrounded by hatred, contempt and bigotry, they're condemned to lead inauthentic lives, full of curdled yearning and clamped-down emotions.

Domestic bliss is especially demonized as a living hell of dirty clothes, screaming babies and wives that just don't understand them. Actually, Alma does, to her despair, having witnessed them share an amorous kiss. Her bitter resignation is expressed in one of the film's funnier (unintentionally?) lines: "You know, I used to wonder why you never brought any trout home."

Lee, who's taken us to ancient China in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and 19th-century England in "Sense and Sensibility," tosses off one iconic image of the West after another. A river of sheep flows though a lush valley. Ennis and Jack are silhouetted like Marlboro Men on a high ridge. And the script, by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, captures the inchoate coulda' shoulda' woulda's of doomed love.

Gyllenhaal continues a string of high-profile performances. His open-hearted Jack is someone who's decided what he wants and won't be easily persuaded to let go of it. But Ledger is getting most of the Oscar buzz. Gone is the baby-faced teen idol Hollywood foisted on us in the dismal "A Knight's Tale." Here, Ledger gives a consummate portrayal of a man so locked-up inside, he can barely function. He pinpoints something in Ennis that's unfulfilled, a missing piece that won't allow him to make peace with himself, even when he's with Jack.

Flawed though it is, "Brokeback Mountain" is a pure original. No one has ever attempted to tell this story on a big screen within this time frame — when tolerance and civil rights a were being grudgingly granted by Middle America to everyone except gays and lesbians.

"That Brokeback got to us good, didn't it?" Jake says ruefully to Ennis.

It'll get to you, too.