Brokeback Mountain

"I wish I knew how to quit you..." Such a meaningful line, especially when you take into consideration that the next scene is the one where Ennis finds out Jack died. Such a beautiful and tragic movie, you don't realise until you watch it why it's one of THE queer movies of all time. The relationship between Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist is one of high significance as you see the two friends become lovers and then as most queer men in that time did, married women and started families to pretend to the world they weren't what they were. This movie does an amazing thing in making you FEEL for Alma when she realises what's going on, and yet you still root for Ennis and Jack, despite the fact you want Alma to be happy too. You feel for Alma again in the dinner scene where Ennis and the children are having dinner with her and her new husband, and you see that she never told her kids about him. She let them have the fantasy that their dad was the perfect man, because the truth ruined her enough, why let it ruin their happiness too? The scene where Ennis and Jack argue with each other about how difficult this facade is for them was easily the most important of the film, because its where we see their love exemplified the most. We hear lines about how they wish they weren't in love with each other, and how they break down in tears in each others arms at the end of that scene really showed the queer experience of that time frame. Wishing you could be what people wanted you to be, and yet, not wanting to change a thing, because whilst it's hard being different, it's even harder pretending you're not. Seeing the two main characters drift apart and then come back together several times over this movie was heartwarming, which really builds up the movie to the tragedy that is Jack's death. Another brilliant aspect of this is the fact we don't know for sure how he died. Lureen says it was a tragic accident, but you, alongside Ennis, get that feeling there was more to it, with how rehearsed Lureen seemed to recall the story. You get a feeling when Ennis and Lureen talk that secretly, she knew about their love, and much like Alma, never confronts them about it. The tragedy in this movie is twofold, in that one half of it is the tragedy of the queer experience, and the other half is the tragedy of being the wives of those hiding. Such a beautiful and meaningful and important movie, you can really tell why it had the cultural impact it did.