Brokeback Mountain

Brokeback Mountain
by Michael Flanagan

I hate those year end lists, where everyone gives their “Best Films of 2005” ideas.  Especially when it’s someone who may have seen almost every film in 2005.  When you’ve seen that many movies, how do you remember?  I guess you go with what affected you the most, but how is there one movie out of hundreds that stands out?  When you take in to account blockbusters, not blockbusters, artsy movies, foreign films, anime, animated, documentary, shorts, and re-releases, you’d have to watch a movie a day, sometimes two, for a year to see every movie, and that’s if you don’t watch any old favorites or re-watch anything.  I’m comfortable in my limited viewing of movies.  I don’t see every one that comes out.  I may only see a few foreign.  I don’t watch anime.  I only see the big animated ones.  Unless a short plays in front of another movie, I won’t see it.  So I try and catch the movies that sound good to me, that people are talking about, that do well and look good, that have actors in them I like.

So when I say Brokeback Mountain is my favorite movie of 2005, I can’t possibly say it’s the best one.  I haven’t seen all of them.  And often, the best of a year isn’t necessarily also a favorite.

This one, though, should fit pretty high on both lists, if not resting firmly at the top.  Here’s to Heath Ledger, who blew me away with his performance.  He’s always good.  I first saw him in Knight’s Tale, which I loved, but didn’t think more of him than that.  He was fine in 10 Things I Hate About You.  And his career went on and he did good work.  In this, though, he shoots above everything else he’s done.  He aptly plays a cowboy, at first seemingly a traditional, tight-lipped, only speak when spoken to, Woodrow Call type (yup, screenplay by Larry McMurtry, and it’s about cowboys).  But he takes the role, which very quickly becomes untraditional, and takes it from a man in his twenties in the 1960s into a man in his forties in the 1980s. 

At least, I think it’s the 80s.  Ang Lee has masterfully created a feel for this movie that makes it not epic.  A cowboy movie that spans decades, and sure the cowboys aren’t real cowboys because it’s the 1960s, and yes they are homosexual, but it’s still one of those years-gone-by movies that doesn’t at all feel that way.  Lee takes the story and wheedles it down to the relationships.  It’s a story about love, about friendship, about truth, responsibility, and family.  And all of these things conflict with each other and with the characters.  It’s all internal, and it plays out wonderfully.

A movie like this that spends its entire running time on its characters is rare, and in order for it to work as well as it did, it needs actors.  Heath Ledger, again, carries the film with next to no dialogue.  Every word, though, is vital.  Jake Gyllenhall is great as the more outspoken man, the one who tries to buck the system, he puts in the work for what he wants, he tries to take action rather than drift where the world tells him to go.  The image of herded sheep is not coincidental here.  Michelle Williams puts the clone that they must have used in “Dawson’s Creek” to shame.  Her response to opening a door on something she never thought she’d see is acting at its finest.  Each performance in this movie is great, actually.  It’s a  movie about people, and all too often director’s forget that you need interesting actors to make good characters.  Not movie stars.

The movie is about choice, at its center.  The ability to take action.  And so, the biggest action in this movie happens off screen.  It’s like a good play that way.  We don’t need to see it.  We’re left to figure it out ourselves, in many ways.  And once you put the pieces together, the tragedy of it becomes very apparent.  If it played out in front of us—jealous, disgraced wife, rich, angry baron father, southern hypocrisy—it would be like a bad Lifetime movie of the week.  More importantly, though, it’s not the point.  The point is the find in the bedroom.  The decision at the end of the movie.  An active decision made out of love rather than hate, dealing your own cards for a while, acting for another rather than self.  Too often, even the best directors forget their center, and we get a movie that feels too drawn out, a little draggy. Thankfully, Ang Lee did not forget. The unspoken promise that ends the film is a definitive choice, an action of the soul.

Strength In Silence

I'm not a big fan of plight movies.  Plight movies, to me, are movies about someone or some groups plight.  My reason for this is not because I'm a heartless, callous bastard, but rather because I have a very keen sense of right and wrong, know not to be racist, homophobic, xenophobic, or any other phobic, and as a result don't need some other creature as imperfect as myself to get on a soapbox in my favorite form of entertainment and preach to me when he himself is just as guilty as I may be of certain things.  I don't  like being preached to, is really the bottom line.

That said, what I do like are stories, stories about anything so long as they are engaging, entertaining, real, human and philosophical.  Like Clarence in True Romance, what I want out of a movie is the intense need after the credits are done rolling to go get a piece of pie and discuss what I've just seen.  I want a movie that makes me think, makes me question and makes me wonder.  If you want this viewer to be more aware of an individual or a group's problems and plights through film, present them to me in a way that doesn't bang me over the head, but rather says "Look at this, does this seem right to you?" and let's me think my way to the answer.

This said, I was wary of Brokeback Mountain.  I'm aware of the way society has treated homosexuals in the past (in this culture and others) and how society treats them today.  I don't need a film to tell me that discriminating against people because of their sexual orientation is wrong.  I know that.  The question was, is Brokeback going to make me think, discuss and philosophize, or beam me over the head with a message until I was bloody with recognition of the statement?

Well, as a fan of Ang Lee's past work (The Hulk excluded, of course), a worshipper of Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series, and a movie lover, I decided to chance the mental beating and go see what was being touted as a "gay cowboy flick."

First of all, it's not a "gay cowboy flick."  It begins in 1963 and goes for twenty years (don't worry, that's not the runtime).  This by no mean qualifies it as a "cowboy flicks."  True cowboys existed for a blink of an eye in the late 1800s.  1963 is not a known year for the existence of "cowboys".  These are boys who work with cows in Wyoming; more accurately, they work with sheep (hold your jokes, folks).  Second of all, while the film is indeed about homosexuals, I would not immediately categorize it as a strictly "gay" movie.  The film is about relationships, about love, actually, about forbidden love.  As several other reviewers have already pointed out, it follows the basic Romeo and Julient, Tristan and Isolde pattern for love stories.  Categorizing it as a "gay movie" frankly does it a grave injustice.

The movie hangs on the performances of Heath Ledger, truly our main character, and Jake Gyllenhaal (whose sister is smoking, by the way:  see Secretary) and they do great justice to the parts.  The story of two young men who discover a passion for each other while doing the lonely work of sheepherding up on Brokeback mountain, is brought vividly and painfully to life by these two young actors, both of whom I suspected were headed for greatness a long time ago.

What the movie focuses on is the love between them, which is as hard for them to accept as will be for many moviegoers this year, and all the obstacles to that love that are inherently placed in their way by the time period they live in, the location they grew up in, and, most importantly, by the lovers themselves. Heath Ledger's Ennis, does not want to be "queer" as he himself says, and that revelation is far from an easy one for him.  Jack Twist (Donnie Darko himself) is more comfortable with the idea but still a far sight from comfortable.  When the two finally consummate the relationship, the love is raw, almost angry, and certainly violent... but it is not violence.  Note the difference.  This scene actually did exactly what I and Clarence want in movies:  So well acted, filmed and written is it, that is spurred great discussion amongst myself, my girlfriend and my friend Cedric who saw it, about the nature of the sex.  Was it cruel?  Did it more resemble a rape than a love affair?  Was it necessary to show that way?

Absolutely.  The scene between two very manly young men raised to believe that there was nothing at all manly about "fags" needed to be a little harsh, as men will often resort to violence when their manhood is challenged.  In this case it is the two of them challenging their own manhood and the scene is about masculinity as much as it is about sex.  The statement of the sex scene is "Yes, I am a man, and doing this doesn't prove otherwise, watch."  Is it a slightly immature way to embrace one's sexuality?  Yes, but both men are slightly immature.  As the movie progresses and the love becomes stronger between them as does their own acceptance of themselves, the love becomes more tender, less violent, but always manly.  And that's the point, isn't it?  They are two men expressing love for each other.

An addendum to this:  My girlfriend felt the movie didn't do a good job of showing the sexual tension between them, before the consummation, couldn't see where the love came from.  Again, this is male love, as any woman (including my girlfriend after I pointed it out) can attest to.  Men don't talk things out, work things around out loud about emotion, feeling, or impulse.  They just do it, and that silence is where the power of the film comes out.

More than anything else Brokeback Mountain is about silence, good silence and bad silence, comfort and distress, silence that should be and silence that shouldn't be.  It is the quiet of the film that brings it too life.  It is all that is unsaid between Ennis and Jack, between Ennis and his daughters and between Ennis and his wife (wonderfully acted by Michelle "Dawson's Creek" Williams, who knew?) that says it all.

So why only give this movie a Super?  Well, just like the yin/yang that is silence in the film, both good and bad, the film underplays itself just a tad toward the end.  The sadness at the end of the film, plays just a little too quiet and, while still stirring, disturbing and awful, doesn't finally ring out with the emotional power of a Monster's Ball, a 21 Grams, or a Million Dollar Baby.  It doesn't have the final ringing power of a Crash.

Regardless, this takes away only a little from a great film that, despite not going 100% of the way, still goes 98% and stays with you for long after you've seen it.

If your nervous about seeing a "gay cowboy movie", don't be.  Ask yourself, do you like a good story about human beings that makes you think?  If your answer is "Yes" go see Brokeback Mountain, an incredible, powerful film.

If your answer is "No," then you probably didn't even get this far into the review.

P.S.  And yes, you do get to see Anne "The Princess Diaries" Hathaway's boobies.  Still think it's a strictly "gay" movie?

Picture Gallery

Back to Top