Brokeback Mountain
Starring: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway, Randy Quaid
Directed By: Ang Lee
Written By: E. Annie Proulx (short story), Larry McMurtry (Screenplay)
MPAA: Rated R

The buzz preceding Brokeback Mountain has set the bar pretty high and the screening I attended positively reeked of anticipation, excitement and “eventness”. This is supposed to be one heck of a movie, and Bareback Mountain delivers the heck in an understated, captivating way.

This is a soulful, touching tale of two men experiencing something they have a hard time coming to grips with. That one wears a white hat and one a black belies the uncertainty and ambivalence the two lead characters share towards what has grown between them.

While Jake Gyllenhaal’s Jack Twist is the quicker of the two – quicker to flash angry, quicker to own his feelings, etc. – he’s not the dominant partner in this couple. It’s the slow, closed-mouthed, tortured soul of Heath Ledger’s Ennis Del Mar who controls the flow; not only to the frustration and bafflement of Jack, but to that of Ennis as well. He speaks volumes in a compressed, minimalist fashion, but you have to mine for the gold in what isn’t said.

There isn’t any obvious interest in each other initially, as they babysit the sheep on the mountain, divvying up the duties in husband-wife fashion and even sharing such false intimacy as seeing each other bathing naked. It isn’t until they start talking about their pasts in long, measured, hesitant conversations that they slowly reveal and warm to each other.

The hot, hard sex in the tent may have taken them both by surprise in the moment, but it seems a natural and inevitable outgrowth of their histories. Everything they do, every step they take is an incremental necessity – first for warmth, then for comfort and finally the quick rush and tumble to love. While there is a gentleness and tenderness in bed after the act, they’re just a couple of guys in the morning (“See you for supper.” “Yep”), barely talking and going about their business.

Much has been made about the gay issue in this movie and it is the central theme and undercurrent throughout. Both characters deny being queer and see what they did as something else (This is very similar to the whole Down Low thing in the black male community.) These aren’t comical cowboy queens sharing the Joy of Boy, a la Jack McFarland in chaps, but two young men racing, chasing and wrestling each other in fun and love, without a thought about the Larger Issue their relationship is raising, at least at the start. The Larger Issue is thinking about them, however, and becomes the dominant force of the rest of their lives.

After their stint on Brokeback, they go their separate ways in a hesitant, fitful fashion. It isn’t until he’s several miles down the road that the depth and intensity of the experience hits Ennis, and he breaks down sobbing by the side of the road, certain something remarkable has happened to him, but not at all certain what that is.

This being overwhelmed by what he doesn’t understand and can’t accept about himself defines his life from here on out. He gets married, has kids, lives normally until – pow! – he gets a postcard from Jack four years later. His whole demeanor changes overnight. He’s more animated and interested than his wife Alma has ever seen him. He waits anxiously by the window for Jack to pull up. When he finally arrives, Ennis runs down the stairs to greet him; but you get the sense that he still doesn’t have a handle on what has happened and is happening to him. They get hot and nasty right there in the parking lot, with Alma an unwitting and horrified observer through the window. If it was a girl, it would be simple, but it’s not, so it’s not. She never ever recovers from that moment when she sees her husband so happy, knowing he’s not hers but worse, knowing he’s not “normal”.

The boys go up to the mountain for a couple of days “fishing”. Jack’s gotten married too, and is differently unhappy (his wife’s family is loaded, and her father never misses an opportunity to rub Jack’s face in it.) He’s ready to build a life with Ennis, but Ennis says no, for a lot of reasons he understands and just as many that he doesn’t. This doesn’t dissuade either of them from making the fishing trips a regular thing, which prove to be the high points of both their lives. The way these trips spill over into their home lives is relentless, and ultimately causes Ennis’ marriage to fail.

The failed marriage leads to a better relationship with his ex and daughters though, as separation sometimes gives good people the distance they need to become better friends. Alma takes the opportunity to confront Ennis about Jack after Thanksgiving dinner, but Ennis is still in violent denial. Coming to grips and making peace with his homosexuality is still beyond him, which is really just one expression of what he doesn’t understand about himself, his family and his life. Unconsciously, he distances himself from his older daughter and her tentative attempt to get closer to him, he sabotages a perfectly fine romance with the local waitress and any notion of a career, because any and all of those things would interfere with his real life with Jack.

The story wraps up around Jack’s death and what Ennis thinks about it and finally discovers about himself. Watching him hug the bloody clothes and savoring the love, changing who he is and what he thinks of that change, is an example in how small things can make big changes.

He blows off a job in the Tetons to attend his younger daughter’s wedding, and that wouldn’t be such an obvious choice for him earlier in life and in the movie. He flirts with disappointing her – unknowingly, as he does so much in his life – but ultimately chooses not to. He has finally made his peace with and commitment to Jack through that act.

I was ready to concede the Best Actor Oscar to Philip Seymour Hoffman for his uncanny portrayal of Truman Capote, but now I’m torn. Heath Ledger has so exceeded expectations with this performance as an older, tight-lipped, reticent, steely-eyed, economical mumbler, that it’s just a pity one of them has to lose.

If we could rewind who Clint Eastwood has become about 30-40 years, and lop off some of the intelligence and awareness that most of his characters possess, you’d have Heath Ledger’s Ennis Del Mar. Eastwood’s characters almost always know what’s wrong and what has to be done to fix it. Ledger’s performance is of a character that doesn’t know what’s wrong and doesn’t know how to fix it. Not so heroic and a bit more challenging, I’d wager.

The Big Sky/Big Mountain country the movie takes place in would really benefit from IMAX or old-fashioned Cinemascope film technology. Its breadth and depth is somewhat compressed on the smallish big screen at the Main, and I’d encourage you to see it on the largest screen available. The music takes an appropriate backseat to the silences of the setting and the relationship, never intruding. A great example of Less is More.

There is a world of learning about what it means to be human and caught up in something you don’t understand in this movie, and it’s worth the effort you’ll put in watching Ennis struggle with himself and who he really is. Unless you limit the movies you see to specific genres, I don’t know how you can avoid putting Brokeback Mountain on your holiday viewing list.