Brokeback Mountain (***)

 The “gay cowboy” movie ends up being a well-acted, mildly poignant story about two inarticulate men struggling to make room in their lives for each other.

I remember when Making Love (1982), the first mainstream Hollywood film to deal explicitly with male homosexuality came out. People gasped when the two males stars kissed. Ang Lee’s “gay cowboy” drama (from a story by Annie Proulx, of Shipping News fame) is the culmination of the mainstreaming of the topic, following comedies like The Birdcage and In & Out, melodramas like Far from Heaven, and an endless array of supporting-role gay characters. In casting two big-shot stars, Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, as its leads in an essentially romantic drama, set mostly in rural Wyoming, Lee does the only thing left to do. While the story, which begins in 1963, is of closeted gay men, the movie doesn’t bother making any statements about homosexuality, recognizing that today’s audience won’t gasp at the topic. (The heterosexual love scenes show more flesh, though.)

For a while, there’s nothing in the movie that would have made John Wayne blush. Starting out slow, it’s just two guys hired to watch over some sheep and forced to spend time alone. I wasn’t expecting it when the first physical contact comes. It seemed almost like they took a look around, saw nothing but sheep, and said, “Well….” I didn’t see exactly why such a deep bond develops between the men. As the film goes on, there’s a little more to go on, but for me it was more the situation—the fact that the men want to be together but cannot—that was compelling rather than their being a great couple. Ledger is particularly good, playing a man of few words, a cowboy equivalent of Johnny Cash who’s the more reluctant to take a risk. Princess Diaries star Anne Hathaway, aided by her hairdresser’s awful creations, also gives a revelatory performance. As a movie meant to choke you up, I thought it was about halfway between Porky’s and Terms of Endearment. But, in its quiet way, it grew on me.

IMDb link

circulated 12/22/05 via email and posted online 9/20/13