I realize this is six years too late, but admittedly I was not as keen of a film goer when this first came out. I saw this for the first time a couple of years ago and thought it was good. I saw it again two days ago and realized it is amazing. It is as moving a love story as I have ever witnessed on screen and, if there is justice in this world, will be counted among the greatest love stories ever told. This film was labeled the "gay cowboy movie" from the moment people heard of its existence. If you see this film and think that's all it is, you have missed everything. Might I suggest for you a nice picture book or perhaps a connect the dots puzzle with half the dots already connected.
The story begins with two men; Ennis del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) who meet awkwardly outside of a trailer in Wyoming. It is summer in 1963 and both men are in need of work. They are instructed to herd sheep up on Brokeback Mountain. This is where they will spend the entire summer and where the seeds of their relationship are planted. One night, when Ennis is attempting to sleep outside, Jack insists that they share the tent due to the cold. That night Ennis and Jack make love for the first time very suddenly. The next day is filled with tension and awkwardness as the men know they must address the previous night. "You know I ain't queer," Ennis says. "Me neither," replies Jack. Over the course of the summer, they become more comfortable with who they are and fall deeply in love.
Jack is able to accept who he is better than Ennis. One day Ennis tells Jack a story of two men who lived together in his hometown. They were both violently murdered, and Ennis' father took him and his brother to see the bodies. "He wanted to make sure we saw it. For all I know, he did the deed," says Ennis. Ennis' situation is further complicated by the fact that he has a fiancee waiting for him back home. Both men depart at the end of the summer and wish each other well. They go and form lives for themselves by settling down and having a family. Ennis marries his fiancee Alma (Michelle Williams who later became Ledger's real life wife) and Jack marries a horse-rider turned business woman named Lureen (Anne Hathaway). They still long for each other and finally meet after four years of separation. Their love is such that they immediately, and almost violently, kiss in the front yard of Ennis' house.
The entire tale spans twenty years and as I watched I was reminded of the Shawshank Redemption, which also tells the story of a relationship between two men that spans two decades. While that relationship was merely one of close friendship, it could just have easily been more than that. Jack and Ennis are not just "gay cowboys" but representations of anyone who has ever longed for something they didn't know how to have. The fact that these men are gay is incidental. As I was watching this with my girlfriend, I had many thoughts about us and our relationship.
The performances in this film are superb. Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal create immensely moving characters with Ennis and Jack. The love they have for each other is easily as powerful, if not more so, than any love shared between and man and a woman in any film I've ever seen. In fact, I cannot remember a love story as touching as this. Jack and Ennis have a greater appreciation for their love than most. In the sixties, seventies, and eighties in rural America, being openly gay was impossible and I'm not sure that's not still the case. They loved each other so much they waited for decades, only to be relieved by "fishing trips" two or three times a year. They told their wives they were going fishing, but Ennis' wife noticed there were never any fish.
The women in this film also give great performances. It cannot be easy to learn that the man you married and built a family with was really in love with another man. Michell Williams and Anne Hathaway had the daunting task of portraying two very different women who were going through the same thing. The only difference is that Hathaway's character's revelation about her husband comes much later in the film than does Williams'. Perhaps she didn't want to know. Perhaps she suspected but never wanted to accept it.
To call this film a "gay cowboy movie" is an offensive oversimplification. The film is a beautiful story of forbidden love, the struggle to come to terms with one's self, and the quest for what your heart craves. This film could have just as easily been about any lovers for whom a relationship would be taboo; people of different religious or ethnic backgrounds for instance. As stated, this is a powerful and gripping love story that can tug the heart strings of men, women, gays, straights, old, and young. Most people say the greatest romantic film of all time is Casablanca. Rick and Ilsa will always have Paris. Ennis and Jack will always have Brokeback Mountain.
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