Brokeback Mountain

Ang Lee’s new film is a powerfully subtle love story, understated yet involving, and was enjoyable enough for me to momentarily forget that he directed Hulk in 2003. This is easily the most entertaining film of Lee’s I’ve witnessed, particularly considering I was one of two people IN THE ENTIRE WORLD (it seems) who disliked Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wo hu cang long).

Heath Ledger (The Brothers Grimm) and Jake Gyllenhaal (The Day After Tomorrow) are perfectly cast as the romantic leads in this tale of forbidden love, and though it took a while to get used to their mumbled, often monosyllabic sentences, I soon learned to appreciate the splendour in their silences. A deliberately slow yet enchanting first act is fantastic, as we spend the months up on the mountain with the two men, witnessing their mundane yet difficult duties as guards over employer Randy Quaid’s flock of sheep. We the audience are loathe to see them return to their normal lives – Ledger and Gyllenhall, that is, not the sheep – and to ‘normal’ (read: socially acceptable) relationships. Michelle Williams (Prozac Nation) is stunning as Ledger’s wife, and it’s heartbreaking to watch her realise why her marriage is crumbling before her eyes. It is rather shocking to see Anne Hathaway in such an adult role after The Princess Diaries, but she too is a fascinating character, strong willed and determined, yet for all her casual detachment just as downtrodden as the other women in the film.

Brokeback Mountain thankfully eschews the majority of homosexual Hollywood clichés, and instead provides us with a Ledger and Gyllenhaal we have never seen before. I was hooked almost straight away, and blissfully forgot all the hype surrounding the ‘risqué’ nature of the film, in supposedly pushing ‘minority issues’ into Hollywood. (As if movies have never focussed on minority groups! How many of you personally know any jewel thieves or intergalactic warlords?) It took me a good twenty minutes to even begin to comprehend Ledger’s muttered, blokey drawl, but he is perfectly matched by the more idealistic (yet just as repressed) Gyllenhaal.

The cinematography is stunning, and we appreciate the beautiful vistas even more so when the story shifts to the dull confines in which our protagonists live. Brokeback Mountain is about escaping to live the life of which we dream but very rarely get to experience. To be honest, it is ‘just a love story’, which explains why my rating might seem out of place after my praise. Also, there’s nothing much original about this film apart from a clever break from the cowboy genre, but Ang Lee’s tale is beautiful, captivating and tragic. There are a couple of predictable plot devices, but Brokeback Mountain’s strength lies in its bold simplicity, how so often the things we truly crave are denied to us.