Brokeback Mountain

It's unfortunate that the name of Ang Lee's new film, Brokeback Mountain, so easily invites parody. I myself have made some plays on the name here on the blog. And here's noted, award-winning broadcasters Chris Matthews and Don Imus discussing the film on Imus' radio show:

MATTHEWS (1/18/06): Have you gone to see it yet? I’ve seen everything else but that. I just—

IMUS: No, I haven’t seen it. Why would I want to see that?

MATTHEWS: I don’t know. No opinion on that. I haven’t seen it either, so—

IMUS: So they were—it was out when I was in New Mexico and—it doesn’t resonate with real cowboys who I know.

MATTHEWS: Yeah—

IMUS: But then, maybe there’s stuff going on on the ranch that I don’t know about. Not on my ranch, but you know—

MATTHEWS: Well, the wonderful Michael Savage, who’s on 570 in DC, who shares a station with you at least, he calls it [laughter]—what’s he call it?—he calls it Bare-back Mount-ing. That’s his name for the movie.

IMUS: Of course, Bernard calls it Fudgepack Mountain...

Way to class up the discourse, guys.

Anyway, it's a shame that the name "Brokeback Mountain" has already become a humorous euphamism for straight guys to chuckle at, because within the movie itself, the title has a great deal of significance and, despite what Don Imus might say, resonance.

The romance that sparks in 1963 between Ennis (Heath Ledger) and Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) during a summer spent herding sheep at the namesake location, hampers their ability to live happily over the course of the next 20 years. It metaphorically breaks their backs - not only showing them a contented life that will be denied them, but providing them information about themselves that they can't live with.

Though it's the impossible love Ennis and Jack share that forms the emotional core of the movie, Brokeback Mountain deals with far more universal themes than repressed homosexual longing. It's about the choices life forces us to make, about the expectations others have for us, and how difficult it can be to fulfill your obligations without giving up on everything else. And it's also about the difficulty of living a double life, how little lies add up over time and form invisible walls between people.

But...you know what...What do I know? Don Imus says that being gay is gross and that real cowboys don't think the movie is good, and he's been on the radio for 40 years now.



The time Ennis and Jack spend on Brokeback Mountain takes up about the film's first third, but it comes to dominate all of the action for the rest of the film. During the long, cold nights spent drinking by the fire, Ennis opens up to Jack about his tragic background. It's probably the first time he's ever talked to anyone, male or female, this personally and honestly. Ennis admits he just said more than he's spoken in a year.

Ledger and Gyllenhaal are both as good as they've ever been in these sequences. This sort of material - two straight guys doing manly activities and slowly discovering a mutual attraction - could have been really campy or silly if overplayed, but both actors have the confidence to just play the scenes as naturally as they can, to just let the action unfold rather than force obvious "moments" of attraction or sensuality between the two guys.

There's one scene early on, before the two have shared more than a handshake and a conversation, where we see Jack in the foreground cooking beans while Ennis changes clothes in the background. You keep expecting Jack to peek a look at his buddy naked, a bit of foreshadowing of what's to come coupled with a hint about Jake's possible homosexual leanings. But it never comes...Jake just stares straight down. It's left to us to infer what we want...Does he see Ennis out of the corner of his eye, and stare down so his attraction won't be suspected? Or is he not even thinking in this context at the film's opening? Lee and the actors leave it to the audience to decide.

Once the ill-tempered ranch owner (Randy Quaid, appearing in a good movie for a rare change) starts to question Jack and Ennis' close friendship, he calls them in a month early and sends them on their way. For four years, they don't speak, and start their own tentative families. Ennis marries his sweetheart from before his experience on Brokeback Mountain (Michelle Williams), who gives him two girls. Jack goes to Texas and gets into rodeo-riding, before settling down with the beautiful scion to a Farm Tool fortune (Anne Hathaway). Together, they have a son.

Eventually, Jack reaches out and gets Ennis to agree to meet up. They go immediately to a motel (but not before Ennis' wife discovers their secret), and agree to meet up whenever possible from that point on.

In between their once-or-twice-yearly "fishing trips" together, both men are unfulfilled in their daily lives. Ennis, who once spoke of buying his own ranch, watches as all his dreams fade into the background while he labors endlessly to care for his family. Jack lives well with his wealthy new wife, and gets a good job selling tractors, but knows he will never be happy without Ennis.

And both men come to feel shame about their love, but for different reasons. Ennis feels shamed by a society that doesn't accept the love between two men. His wife asks often about his freqeunt trips into the wilderness with his friend who won't ever come inside for coffee, and his children genuinely seem to miss him when he's gone. Jack, on the other hand, seems less concerned by what others think, and more concerned with why Ennis pushes him away. He searches for love from other men, to feel the void Ennis leaves every time he returns to his family, but it doesn't take away his longing or his depression. Jack is shamed not by a cruel society, but by a lover who doesn't want him around.

It's pretty bleak stuff, and screenwriters Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry, and Ang Lee, give the film an almost unbearable sense of melancholy. Rather than an angry movie, castigating a culture that wouldn't allow Ennis and Jack to live together in peace, they have made a movie that's all about sadness - how it starts with disappointment and frustration and over the years morphs into a inner void that mutes any future happiness or satisfaction.

Generally, films like Brokeback Mountain, that follow a relationship or plot over a span of decades, have a rushed sort of feeling. You breeze through the years seeing little moments taken out of context, never getting an immediate feeling for any of the characters or specific situations. The films are in a constant state of flux - children grow up instantly, hairstyles and appearances change, settings are different, and you lose a sense of the daily reality in the character's lives.

Though Lee's film still incorporates some of this mateiral - we measure the length between scenes at times by Anne Hathaway's various hair colors and styles - he nevertheless manages to give Jack and Ennis believable, lived-in realities. Ennis' daughter, Alma Jr. grows up from a baby into a 19 year old woman during the film, so she's played by a variety of young actresses, yet she nevertheless feels like a consistant premise in the film. She's the only one in her family who can accept the shell of a man her father has become.

I usually reject tearjerkers and melodramas because they are overly ambitious. Some directors seem to take their license to manipulate for granted. Because they're making a film, and some films are sad, they can be a shameless in their attempts to make people feel bad as the screenplay will allow. (Mark Forster, director of Monster's Ball and Finding Neverland comes immeidately to mind. He never met a tragic early death he didn't like.)

Lee has made a film that is profoundly sad, but never once manipulative. It is sad because its characters are sad, because the only situation that would provide for any chance at happiness is untenable and there's nothing that can be done. It is profound because of the insightfulness of McMurtry and Ossana's sharp, subtle writing (and, presumably, the E. Annie Proulx short story that inspired the film), the terrific Ledger and Gyllenhaal performances, the muted dried-out cinematography of Rodrigo Prieto and some of Ang Lee's most adroit, relaxed work as a director. Brokeback Mountain ranks among his very best films.