SYNOPSIS
From Academy Award-winning filmmaker Ang Lee comes an epic American love story, based on the short story by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Proulx and adapted for the screen by the team of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. Set against the sweeping vistas of Wyoming and Texas, the film tells the story of two young men – a ranch-hand and a rodeo cowboy – who meet in the summer of 1963, and unexpectedly forge a lifelong connection, one whose complications, joys and tragedies provide a testament to the endurance and power of love. Early one morning in Signal, Wyoming, Ennis del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) meet while lining up for employment with local rancher Joe Aguirre (Randy Quaid). The world which Ennis and Jack have been born into is at once changing rapidly and yet scarcely evolving. Both young men seem certain of their set places in the heartland – obtaining steady work, marrying and raising a family – and yet hunger for something beyond what they can articulate. When Aguirre dispatches them to work as sheepherders up on the majestic Brokeback Mountain, they gravitate towards camaraderie and then a deeper intimacy. At summer's end, the two must come down from Brokeback and part ways. Remaining in Wyoming, Ennis weds his sweetheart Alma (Michelle Williams), with whom he will have two daughters as he ekes out a living. Jack, in Texas, catches the eye of a rodeo queen Lureen Newsome (Anne Hathaway). Their courtship and marriage result in a son, as well as jobs in her father's business. Four years pass. One day, Alma brings Ennis a postcard from Jack, who is en route to visit Wyoming. Ennis waits expectantly for his friend, and when Jack at last arrives, in just one moment it is clear that the passage of time has only strengthened the men's attachment. In the years that follow, Ennis and Jack struggle to keep their secret bond alive. They meet up several times annually. Even when they are apart, they face the eternal questions of fidelity, commitment and trust. Ultimately, the one constant in their lives is a force of nature – love.
Review by
ELISABETH LEITCH
For the past week, I have been trying to write a review of Brokeback Mountain. I’ve started it several times; I just hadn’t been able figure out exactly what I thought about. Each thought kept running into the movie’s tagline, its previews, its press releases, its nominations, its awards, and its many four star praises from almost every respected critic who had seen it. Everything about the movie said I should have liked it, should have appreciated its artistry and been drawn into its story, but the things is, I didn’t and as much as I tried to figure it out, I wasn’t exactly sure why.
So, the question was, why didn’t I like it? The easiest answer—it had so much hype, so much buzz, and so many preconceived notions about how “good” it was going to be, there was no way it could’ve lived up to what I expected. Decent answer. I always tend to like movies I’ve heard next to nothing about more than highly praised and publicized ones. On a strictly artistic level, yes, it was well done. But it was not that well done. It would not have gotten my nomination for Best Picture. The acting was good, but none of the actors, save Michelle Williams, were able to make me totally forget they were acting. And the music? Not bad. But even a day later, I don’t think I could have told you what it sounded like.
As I have figured out on many occasions, however, the easy answer usually isn’t the whole story. It wasn’t a bad movie. It was certainly better directed and acted than many of the mindless popcorn flicks that have filled our theaters for the past year. So as I sat and thought about it, I knew that my disappointment had to run deeper. I knew that my problem with the movie had to be the story, a story that so many have praised, a story that so many have applauded, and a story that I could not buy.
But I felt bad for not also being able to praise the story. Was I a bigot? Was I just too intolerant to accept a story about romance slightly different from that which I have experienced in my own life? By not liking the movie, was I just slapping one of my closest friends and his boyfriend in the face, turning my back on them, and essential telling them I couldn’t condone a movie like that?
But then I realized, when I went into the movie, I had fully expected to like it. I wanted to see it. I wanted to watch a story about love. And I fully expected the story to make me believe in love. When it came down to it, it became clear to me that the true reason why I did not like Brokeback Mountain is that I barely saw any love in it at all.
Cowboys Jack Swift and Ennis Del Mar are certainly attracted to each other. As someone who likes men, I can’t see why not. They seem happy when they are with each other. They like the sex. Their separation causes them pain and their union fills each other with excitement and arousal. But when it came down to it, all I could see in their pain and excitement was a desire to fill a hole in each of themselves. And, in a relationship where all I saw was two separate men seeking their own separate satisfaction, I could not see any love. I may be wrong, but as far as I can remember, not a single person even says I love you throughout the entire movie.
But more than anything else, the thing that hit me most, the element that ruined any hope of me seeing Brokeback Mountain as a love story and simply cemented it as a story of brokenness, is that both Jack and Ennis are in the exact same place at the end of the story as they were at the beginning.
Many reviewers have commented on Ang Lee’s choice to cast Jack and Ennis young, a risky move, but one that most felt was an excellent choice. As I look back on the movie, however, the casting only reinforces its sadness. The movie takes place over a course of 20 years, yet neither Heath Ledger’s Ennis or Jake Gyllenhaal’s Jack appear to age a day. Around them life moves on. Eventually Ennis’ ex-wife remarries and actually seems to be happy. His oldest daughter grows from a newborn to a 19-year-old, planning her wedding, certain of her fiancée’s love for her, and eagerly looking to the future. Yet Ennis is just as lonely and sad as when the movie started.
As much as Brokeback Mountain is a story about a forbidden relationship, the bigger story that I saw was a story about a search for happiness, for value, and for a place in this world.
At the beginning of the story, neither Jack nor Ennis have any of those things. Jack has been raised to look down upon himself as man and thus on his position of value and purpose in this world. Ennis just can’t seem to connect with anyone. All he knows is distance, hardship, and loss. Neither is happy, both have lived too much of life alone, and it is in this state that they meet.
Many of us know how they feel. I know it well. That feeling of emptiness and loneliness. An ache that goes so deep, that just cries out for something to make me happy, something that will make me feel like I, Elisabeth, am a person of value. And, believe me, I have considered many things to try to just find a moment of happiness. Drugs, alcohol, even a night of sex just so I can tell myself that someone wanted to be with me. That voice inside my head that tells me, if only I had this or that, and then torments me when feel like I might have found it; even if it isn’t ideal, it was good in the moment; how could I ever presume I will find anything like it again? How can I let it go?
When I finally came to think about why I didn’t like the movie, I was surprised by how much I identified with Jack and Ennis. I might not be a cowboy, I might not be gay, but I do know what it is like to long for happiness, to search for anything that will help me to feel it, to fear letting go of anything that could be the key to it, maybe, possibly, if I just hold onto it long enough…
Throughout Brokeback Mountain Jack and Ennis search for that same happiness. They seek it in ideals by marrying their wives and starting families. They keep trying to hold onto that glimpse of it in each other. But in the end, neither one does the trick. Some may say if they had gotten together, Jack and Ennis would’ve been happy…but all I can think about is how much they held each other back. Rather than binding them together in love, all their relationship seemed to do was bind them to lives of unhappiness.
Aching for happiness is not fun. Trying to figure out how to find happiness, even just a functional state of satisfaction and purpose, is not easy. Like Jack and Ennis, I have struggled with those brief tastes of that happiness, tastes I want to go back to, tastes that can grab a hold of me and freeze me where I am in fear that I have found my only option for happiness and better not let it go. But I have also been fortunate enough to come out on the other side. To deal with the pain of letting go, of realizing that one certain person, one specific job, or one distinct life path will never result in my happiness.
While I still don’t claim to know exactly what happiness is, my gut feeling is that it is about something bigger, about knowing that I am a part of something bigger, that value is about something bigger, and that happiness need not depend on my circumstances. I struggle with my belief in that bigger something, in God, in that unconditional love that is so hard to comprehend in world so messed up. Yet even amidst this struggle, this pursuit of happiness and this search for value, I cannot help but believe that even though relationships and circumstances will be a part of our lives, the only way we will ever be able to fully experience love and value in this life is if we are able to first find freedom in a value and purpose that is bigger than just the here and now.
