I went into the theatre 2 days after Brokeback Mountain made a clean sweep (or almost) at the BAFTA, picking up accolades for Best Picture, Direction and an acting award for Jake Gyllenhaal. The BAFTA affirms the rave reviews it has received since it opened to an enthusiastic American audience in December (NY/LA) / January and signals a similar triumph at the Academy Awards come March 6.Critics and moviegoers alike hail this controversial tale of gay love in an era where homosexual relationships are persecuted with no recourse as anything from “the love story of the year” to “a cinematic landmark”, resulting in Golden Globes for both the film and its director, Ang Lee.
Well, I can’t exactly say I am one of them.
Perhaps, the mountain heaps of critical acclaim, public applause and industrial accolades have raised my expectations too high and as always, the higher you go, the harder you fall. I find the story extremely ordinary. It fails to move me until the final few minutes of the film; when I begin to feel something stir in the depths of my heart, it’s all over.
The leads, Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, are only two of the thousands of homosexual individuals in this world, even back in the dark age of the 60s, who engage in similar dangerous liaisons, some more courageously than others. It is merely putting onto the big screen something that we all know. A few times throughout the movie, I find myself saying, “Enough already, we all know that. Let’s move on.”
That said, Brokeback does raise an issue, as deliberated in author Annie Proulx’s short story, upon which the film’s screenplay is adapted by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, that people who are thrust into a position of sexual disorientation, either by birth or circumstance, reserve the right to humanly feelings. That includes love. It is an issue that the most conservative of us still refuse to acknowledge today so at its best, Brokeback Mountain can cause hairline cracks in long-standing prejudice against homosexuality.
The film also lives up to its genre as an epic western. Abundantly featured are sweeping shots of expansive prairie land and rugged mountains under clear blue skies, summoning a feeling of intense loneliness and longing, a prelude to the story that follows.
The scenery is certainly awesome on the big screen but alas, the story trudges along a bit too slowly, as if to let the audience take in the picturesque country as they would on a holiday and witness a robbery of the freedom to love in extended moments of solitude in a dark theatre. The one redemption to this film for me is some great performances by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as the ill-fated gay lovers and Michelle Williams as Alma, the estranged wife who discovers her husband’s sexual orientation too late to live in humiliation forever.
Alma has been engaged to Ennis del Mar (Heath Ledger) even before he meets Gyllenhaal’s character, Jack Twist, in a herding assignment out in Wyoming’s Brokeback Mountain. Up on the lonely slopes, Ennis rediscovers himself. Ennis is a taciturn man, who speaks with a drawl that hinges on incomprehensibility, either by nature or in a bid to suppress his true sexual identity after witnessing the torture and mutilation of a queer. Jack is quite the opposite. An aspiring rodeo rider, Jack is an exuberant youth, unafraid and totally frank about his sexual orientation, at least to Ennis. Jack seduces Ennis, drawing him into a tragic romance that spans 20 years.
They are prematurely recalled from the mountains due to a brewing storm, probably just an excuse of the owner who glimpses the boys’ travails as he delivers news of Jack’s ailing uncle. That explains the increasing number of coyote attacks on the herd, clearly due to the absence of the shepherd who is babysitting his new lover rather than sheep. Ennis goes on to marry Alma and fathers 2 daughters in Riverton, Wyoming while Jack settles in Texas with rodeo queen, Lureen (Anne Hathaway), the daughter of a wealthy farm equipment dealer, and promptly takes charge of the family business.
The memory of Brokeback Mountain lingers on for both men. Jack’s postcard arrives unexpectedly one day. Alma questions her husband, to which Ennis replies that Jack is his longtime fishing buddy, a lie that will quickly come to light with Jack’s arrival.
The passionate embrace shared by Ennis and Jack below their apartment stumps Alma, reeling her into the chasm of humiliation. Quietly, she examines Ennis’ fishing kit upon his return from a weekend with Jack and finds no trace of a consummated fishing trip. No surprise.
For several years, Jack and Ennis meet in the wilderness of Brokeback Mountain. If Lureen never discovers the truth, she is certainly displeased with Jack’s frequent 10-hour drive north. Ennis and Alma drift apart, a divorce is inevitable. An ecstatic Jack arrives at Ennis’ door the instant he receives news of the divorce, with hopes of a new life with Ennis at a ranch he plans to buy. Ennis, always the more reserved of the pair, rejects the idea. Infuriated, Jack heads back south, their regular rendezvous at Brokeback Mountain ceases in the aftermath.
The years roll by. Ennis meets a new woman whom he is unable to accept for fear of inflicting the same hurt on her as he did Alma. Jack, on the other hand, begins sexual pilgrimages to Mexico to fill the void that Ennis leaves behind. The couple meets again at Brokeback Mountain as thirty-somethings, Jack sporting a moustache and beer belly, a somewhat ridiculous and clearly unsuccessful attempt at adding 15 years to Gyllenhaal’s own 24. Ledger’s aging makeup is more convincing, with graying sideburns, a weathered countenance and if I heard correctly, a voice more gruff than young Ennis’. With his face always in the shadow of his cowboy hat, it is hard to tell.
Jack has not given up on his dream of a new life with Ennis. But after all that he has been through, Ennis is resigned to his fate – perpetual estrangement from the love of his life. That would be the last time he sees Jack, who dies at age 39 in an unwitnessed accident back in Texas, drowned in his own blood … or is it an accident after all?
Here is the sad part, the part where I feel my heartstrings tug a little. The only way to dissolve a homosexual relationship is by the death of one of the partners who brings the deadly secret to his grave while the living partner mourns. It is also apt that Jack should be the one passing, for tight-lipped Ennis will never ever tell, the final scene a symbolic closing of the closet door where Jack’s shirt, worn on Brokeback in their happier days as young ranch hands, now resides – the closet affair that must never see the light of day.
I love Heath Ledger as the quietly suffering Ennis del Mar. Here, the Australian actor demonstrates acute empathy for closet lovers living in 1960s America, when much of the country’s sociopolitical landscape is marred by bigotry. In a long time coming, Ledger, who has always been cast in roles that belie his potential, finally proves himself as an actor to be reckoned with, his outstanding performance as Ennis duly recognized by the Academy with a Best Actor nomination.
Jake Gyllenhaal who already bags a Best Supporting Actor BAFTA for his role as Jack Twist, is a tad bit pale in comparison to Ledger’s strong characterization of Ennis. Nevertheless, his wide-eyed exuberance and sheepish grin brilliantly personifies Jack Twist, whose waghalsig, devil-may-care approach to homosexual relationships (and Ennis) in an age that forbids it breeds dire consequences.
Michelle Williams, who is incidentally Ledger’s fiancée, puts on an amazing performance as Alma, a stereotypical woman of the 60s in small mid-western towns who suffers the cruel blows that life deals her in silence. No one can forget her stunned revelation at Ennis’ passionate welcome of his “fishing buddy”.
The trio is indeed the saving grace of this over-stretched drama.
