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'Brokeback Mountain' turns tricky terrain into a fine film

Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist do not meet cute, banter crisply or go through any of the other rituals of romance that are movie staples. Yet Brokeback Mountain, the saga of their 20-year relationship, is the cinematic love story of the year.

Based on an Annie Proulx short story first published in The New Yorker in 1997, and brought to the screen by versatile director Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain is not a political film arguing for gay rights or acceptance. More subversively, perhaps, it presents the attraction between two laconic cowboys as simply a fact of life. Their love for each other is like a force of nature, and their attempts to fit in and deny how they feel are achingly real.

Focus Features 'Brokeback Mountain' A The verdict: An epic American love story of two men trying to deny their feelings for each other. 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. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime [an error occurred while processing this directive]

The tale begins in 1963, as Ennis (Heath Ledger) and Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) both apply to work as sheepherders in the Wyoming high country, protecting the woolly creatures from coyotes and the bitter weather.

Their day-to-day life, fueled by canned beans and cheap whiskey, is anything but dramatic. But one chilly night, Jack invites Ennis to snuggle close for shared warmth, which leads to a sexual line-crossing that neither one seems to have expected.

Lee is careful to depict their encounter discreetly, though what happens is unmistakable, even if the two of them crawl back in their shells of denial the next morning. From then on, they cannot keep their hands off each other, though they often express their growing affection with macho rough-housing. And they part with a "See you around" matter-of-factness at the end of the season and go home — Ennis nearby, Jack back to Texas — intent on hiding from their feelings in conventional marriages.

Ennis weds his childhood sweetheart Alma (Michelle Williams, Ledger's real-life partner) and is soon shackled with two daughters and financial pressures. Jack hooks up with aggressive, big-haired rodeo queen Lureen (Anne Hathaway), marrying into her father's lucrative farm-equipment company.

But heterosexual conformity suits neither man, so they meet regularly in Wyoming, ostensibly for fishing trips. But it is hard to catch fish from inside a motel room.

Ennis rarely says anything, and when he does Ledger delivers his dialogue without moving his lips, a physical manifestation of his emotionally bottled-up state. In this breakthrough role for the actor, he brings to mind a young Tommy Lee Jones. And in his silences and grunts, there is an eloquence. Late in Brokeback Mountain, Ennis goes to visit Jack's equally tight-lipped parents, and the scene is wrenching in its nonverbal communication.

Credit is due all around, from the breathtaking cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto, who captures the stunning vistas of the New West, to the unhurried yet lean editing of Geraldine Peroni and Dylan Tichenor.

But it is the adapted screenplay by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana that succinctly establishes a vocabulary for these characters and aptly fleshes out the wives and their family life.

Gyllenhaal takes a back seat to Ledger, but he, too, seems to grow up with this film, giving his best dramatic work. And Williams impresses as she conveys the heartbreak of a neglected wife — anguished that her husband is unfaithful, the gender of his lover all but irrelevant.

Brokeback Mountain is tricky terrain, which director Lee rides with seeming ease. That it arrives from within a Hollywood system that has churned out so many awkward soap-opera movies about gay love makes it all the more astonishing.