Brokeback Mountain

(4K) “You may be a sinner, but I ain't yet had the opportunity.” Devastating humanity. Growing up in Southeast Missouri, it’s been interesting and disheartening to grow up and watch this film’s philosophy and plight continuously being rectified and validated. I can’t tell you how many times in my life I’ve heard people refer to Ang Lee’s film as “Buttfuck Mountain”, discredit it merely as a gay cowboy film, pass around the DVD hidden by gift wrap as a prank on an unsuspecting but equally and distressingly homophobic relative at Christmas. The fact that it deals with such a stereotypically masculine and testosterone oriented world as the one of the cowboy and uses it to portray a way of life and a kind of love that’s bafflingly still something people want to make into an issue or a discourse has ensured that for however revolutionary and groundbreaking as it may have been, it will always cause Conservatives and paranoid, needlessly intolerant people to ruffle their feathers and become embittered, to act as if somebody else’s form of love and belonging is something to be mocked and belittled simply because they’ve been taught to fear what’s different from their comprehension of the world around them. And that’s a shame because Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain is one of the most heartbreaking love stories ever captured on film. A sobering essay on how homophobia so deeply damages everything in its wake and how desperate people who feel trapped within themselves will become to escape it. I’ve found Lee to be a remarkably emotionally astute filmmaker who has a unique ability to dig under the skin of the characters on the screen and peel back layer upon layer, exposing them to us in a way that can be alarmingly intimate. I think it’s interesting to watch the film after almost twenty years of every bit of hyperbole that can be thrown at it, on either side of the fence, and to find that it’s just a story about a crushingly quiet and strained relationship between men who couldn’t find a way to overcome the world around them and have what each of them most wanted. There’s a profound sense of emotional maturity and grace extended to these characters, that treats each of them like human beings. “Hurt people hurt people”, and all that. Nobody really escapes the film without a broken heart. It’s a film about what happens when you walk between two worlds. About what happens when you love the person you’re with, but you may not truly be in love with them. And the damage that that can wreak. Kino Lorber’s 4K restoration is dazzling. Rodrigo Prieto is a master of his craft and, through his decade long collaboration with Scorsese, he’s become one of my very favorite cinematographers. His work here is no different. Every frame of the film could be a painting, could be something that you’d hang on your wall. He treats Wyoming and Texas like heaven on earth. The titular mountain looms over the whole picture with this gargantuan shadow, as their only escape but an ancient indicator of the vast distance between the two of them and what each man most deeply desires. Superficially, I adore how much Lee and Prieto choose to dress it up like a good and proper Western. It’s got those grand, picturesque compositions and the rugged terrain. It’s a masculine, heartily shot film that’s not afraid to showcase moments of brutality that extends beyond just emotion. For every right wing chud that wants to paint this as a movie made for fairies, Brokeback Mountain displays a more authentic and earnest depiction of the hardships of the frontier than most cowboy flicks that have come since. This could just be me speculating but I swear I even see a little bit of harkening back to the definitive Ford western when Ennis leaves Jack’s childhood home in the last stretch of the runtime: a sad, lonely man stepping quietly through a doorway and onto the hard soil, unsure of his own place in the world. I appreciate how grounded and close to the chest the main cast keeps their work. Each of them rise to the occasion but never dare to compromise it by going too far. There’s not a single turn here that I don’t find incredibly gripping and moving for its simplicity. Even David Harbour (long before he ever had his breakout moment) comes in for a singular moment and leaves a deafening impact. I find it to be pretty insane that Anne Hathaway was the one of the core four cast members to not receive attention from the Academy for this one. I think she’s every bit as on par as the others, in a way that’s perhaps not as demanding or as immediately decipherable as they are. We spend the least amount of time with her out of the core love quartet so perhaps she’s fighting an uphill battle, but that final moment when she talks to Ennis and it becomes more than evident that she very clearly knew what was happening is devastating. Those small, quiet hums and the sucking of teeth that comes when somebody’s trying their best to not lose their composure. Those big brown eyes welling up. Heartbreaking. I can’t believe Michelle Williams didn’t win everything she was eligible for, though. The film asks the most of her, I think, because it’s smart enough and nuanced enough to ask her to take Alma and make it clear that she’s not merely some homophobic, scorned wife. It would be easy to vilify a character in her position. But the film’s script and Williams’ performance showcase that her heartbreak comes from the fact that the man she loves— doesn’t love her. At least, not in the way she had always hoped for. It comes from a place of crushing loneliness and a feeling of dejection. That moment when she first sees the two of them kiss is one of the most deep cutting moments in film that I can think of and it’s all in her face, that crashing tide of a very sudden realization that she’s not the one he wants. Not really. Jake Gyllenhaal’s long since been established as one of our best actors so it shouldn’t be any surprise that he’s brilliant here, but the way he manages to balance the inner turmoil in Jack’s heart is honestly kind of staggering. Out of the two leads, he’s the one that’s the most forthcoming with how much he loves the other man. He makes it known more than once that he would be willing to forget everything else for a life together. He so deeply, terribly wants to live as his true self… and yet, for the most part, there doesn’t seem to be a wedge between him and Lureen, at least not like with Ennis and Alma. Obviously that’s not something that lasts, but he seems to somehow balance it. At least, for a while. He’s not able to overcome the ache of his heart. And that’s what costs him. A tragic, bold turn and one of the best for an actor who has a list of great work as long as both of my arms. Most of all, I’ll be honest, I was so transfixed on Heath Ledger. It’s hard to be too bitter about this performance when it’s enduring legacy far surpasses any trophy that he could’ve won for it, and it’s not as if he didn’t leave us with another performance that’s far more iconic and definitive to his body of work as an actor. But when you come back here, he’s every bit as transformative and as captivating as Ennis Del Mar as he was as the Joker. Ledger was a joyful, artistic soul who was described as unfathomably kind and personable. What he does here as a grumbling, stoic cowboy who seems all but incapable of coming out of his own shell, except in the arms of one other person, is monumental. There’s a hardened, almost impenetrable wall that you can see behind his eyes. Something that just won’t let other people in. When he sheds tears, when his body convulses with grief, when we see those white hot flashes of anger, it feels like an avalanche. Ennis is a man who is so pent up and trapped in his own life that he doesn’t know how to wear a mask like Jack does. When the one person that ever truly touched his heart comes back into his life, nothing else matters. Not his wife. Not his children. You don’t get the sense that he hates them— but they’re effectively turned into obstacles that come between him and his truest self. Whether he wants them to be or not, whether he means for them to be or not. We care about Ennis because Ledger has such a heartbreaking set of eyes and because we have considerable empathy for the pain that he’s undoubtedly going through, but the film doesn’t shy away from showing that he is not immune to the blinding selfishness that love can push us into. He’s a complicated, flawed character. One that I find fascinating. And when you consider that Heath was only twenty five years old (the same age as me, as of this writing, which is depressing) at the time of production: his ability to portray a man carrying such secretive, unfed desire in his heart for two decades is nothing short of incredible. He was such a brilliant actor. The fact that we will never know what he could have done across these past sixteen years is one of the medium’s great losses. Brokeback Mountain was deeply moving. I’ve seen some people (still with otherwise glowing takes on the film) make the argument that not enough time is given to seeing how Ennis and Jack fall in love. I’m not sure I really buy that. Their immediate understanding and comfort around each other, the fact that spend an entire summer together alone and only with each other. A lot can happen in such a span of time and it never once seemed as if a leap was taken to get to that first scene in the tent. The heart is its own beast and it’s not always so easy that you get to have say over what it feels or what it wants. And when they finally reunite with that kiss that, famously, almost ended with Heath breaking Jake’s nose? I’m completely enraptured in their story. You can’t stop nature. It just takes its natural course and it’s up to you to navigate the aftermath. Ang Lee positions the experience that is falling in love to be a very similar phenomena. The difference in the person you may be with, and the person that you’re supposed to be with and how they aren’t always the same. You feel the same burning hole in your chest when Alma talks about that fishing note as you do when Ennis finds Jack’s shirt. Just a cycle of heartbreak and people who were fed false lives because of a world that was too cruel. Deeply arresting, perfect work. “Tell you what... the truth is... sometimes I miss you so much I can hardly stand it.“