Brokeback Mountain

I've been calling this the 'gay cowboys' movie ever since it was announced. The premise was not something I knew how I would react to and so it was funny to call it that and not actually think about it, but there was something in the idea and the movie could actually be worth something, it is. Based on Annie Proulx short story, Academy Award nominee Ang Lee directs Brokeback Mountain, the story of two young men in 1963 Wyoming who meet and fall in love during one summer spent at the titular mountain while herding sheep, and form a relation that will affect their entire lives.
Beautifully translated for the big screen by Larry McMurtry (The Last Picture Show) and Diana Ossana, the story is makes for powerful performances by its two leads Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. Far from dreaming about the current gay marriage craze of today's world, theirs is one of the greatest, most honest and genuine love stories ever put on film.

The story is not that of two flamboyant gay men living happy together throughout their lives, and not even their beginning is easy. It all starts after a drinking night, and their first sexual interaction can already put off some people. It's raw and violent, and quite unexpected if you don't already know what the movie is about. But after that it transforms into the story of Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, who are not gay, but feel the attraction between each other, but there's nothing they can do about it, because the world they live in is not prepared for it, and they know for a fact what happens to those that even dare to live together. So what happened at Brokeback must stay at Brokeback, but is not that easy, and we receive the first hit after they separate for the first time, as Ennis breaks in tears at a nearby alley back in town, vomiting and internally bleeding from the situation. Heath Ledger's terrific performance of Ennis is breathtaking. He plays him quite but very emotionally wounded, understanding what happens and what must be done but knowing inside himself what he really wants. This is an Oscar worthy performance, and the best I've seen all year over Philip Seymour Hoffman's Capote and Joaquin Phoenix's Johnny Cash.
And then Jake Gyllenhaal as Jack, the most outspoken of the two about their relationship. He loves Ennis more than anything in the world, even after he eventually marries and has a son. Gyllenhaal's is too an Oscar worthy performance, making his character truly hurt and hateful towards the world for the relationship he's not able to live the way he wants.
And so just as Ennis, he ends up married, and that takes us to the women.

Michelle Williams is outstanding as Alma Del Mar, and she also puts a very internal performance that kicks in the very moment Ennis and Jack reunite for the first time 4 years after Brokeback Mountain. It's a double punch scene as we are touched by the reunion in which the two men can't help but fall in love right back and fiercely kiss, but then Alma sees them, and we are loaded with an incredible guilt and at the painful sight of Michelle Williams reaction. That alone is an award worthy performance, and then she cements it with a scene many years later when she finally tells Ennis that she's known the truth all the time, and never said anything knowing that her husband and his friend did not go fishing during those two or three times a year they went back to Brokeback during the rest of their lives. Oscar might be a bit too much though, as she only appears every now and then during the twenty years the story takes us, but she has a chance and the performance is no short of mesmerizing.
And then we have the former Disney Princess Anne Hathaway as Lureen Twist, a woman so much into herself that she never knew about her husband's situation. I mentioned that the story spans through twenty years, and Hathaway’s Lureen was the only character I felt the aging did not work, and it was almost distracting to watch. Her acting is great, so there is not problem at all, and she gets naked (Michelle Williams as well, not together of course) which will help get male audiences in.
Finally there's Linda Cardellini who plays Cassie Cartwright on Ennis' life, and her role is way too small, just two or three scenes, but one of those is better than many supporting performances in most movies this year.

Ang Lee deserves much praise and awards for his work here, with the actors and with everything else like the team he assembled behind the camera. Usual Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Amores Perros, 21 Grams and the upcoming Babel) collaborator Rodrigo Prieto films the vast fields of Brokeback with a delicate hand, making for one of the most wonderful scenery put on film this year. And then the amazing score by Gustavo Santaolalla (The Motorcycle Diaries, and another Gonzalez Inarritu collaborator) whose acoustic guitar hits just at the right times when the men are together, silencing just as their hearts are empty when they are separated.
As I was watching the movie, I knew it was something different, I knew it was excellent, and then a final scene towards the end with Ennis and his daughter (a young woman about to get married) made me cry. Affecting, real and deeply haunting, Brokeback Mountain is everything you could wish for from a love story, gay or not, and it's one of the best movies of the year.