Brokeback Mountain

[gategrrl]

Good movie. The story and director and actors were well-matched for this one. Brokeback Mountain was as much a story about manners and social mores as Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility, released in 1995. But in this one, Lee's use of subtext and "reading between the lines" was more skillfully used.

Heath Ledger was clearly "the star" in this film. His role, as the laconic and repressed and afraid Ennis, was the center of the film. The short story by Anne Proulx was pretty evenly divided between the two men, but it was Ennis who was the voice of practicality and awareness of the consequences of his feelings for Jack. Jack, more openly frustrated by things unsaid and less afraid to express them (the scene when he stands up to his father-in-law in front of his wife and son) is the one who ends up paying the consequences of Ennis' fears - justified or not.

It's a complex movie, and it's so much more than a "chick flick". It was filled with angst. It was filled with passionate scenes (though less so than one might have thought). But most of all, it's an amazing series of character studies. Of what is said, and not said, and what happens when the forbidden is finally spoken of, or not; and how one speaks of it.

Ennis' wife, now divorced from him, but having him over for Thanksgiving dinner at her new home with her new husband and their two girls - finally broaches the subject of what Ennis and Jack were REALLY doing on those fishing trips. They both explode in a fury of emotion. She has finally brought to light what he thought was hidden, and Ennis is overcome with rage, hurt, guilt (that he hurt her, when he didn't mean to? that she hadn't said anything before?) and storms out after a physical altercation.

Contrast that scene with Ennis and Jack's mother and father. We only see Jack's parents for a couple of scenes, but there are an amazing complex of emotions ranging through the room, playing on multiple levels that are just staggeringly portrayed. Roberta Maxwell, as Jack's mother, uses body language masterfully. With a minimum of words, you can tell she felt sympathy for Ennis. That she would have accepted him. Jack had wanted Ennis to move to his family's ranch and help work it. Jack's mother might have been okay with the realities of Jack's and Ennis' relationship. It's Jack's father who shows a real complex reaction to Ennis. His actor portrays him as angry at Ennis. Why? It's hard to tell: there are so many reasons. Ennis didn't come to the ranch to help with Jack's dream? Ennis wasn't a woman? Ennis' own fears caused Jack's death? He caused Jack pain? He triggered Jack's homosexuality? He was a part of Jack's life? (earlier in the film, Jack tells how his father never came to a rodeo to see him compete, painting him as a distant and uncaring man...which may or may not be true) In any case, the amount of resentment displayed by Jack's father/actor could have been caused by any one or more of those reasons - or ALL of them.

None of the male characters in the movie seem to be self-aware to a great degree. Except for Jack, who is more verbal than Ennis, than almost everyone else in the film. Jake Gyllanhaal does a good job with Jack. He's believable as a man who could pierce Ennis' stoic exterior and find the humor hidden beneath. But...Jack was less complex, there was less hidden, he was more "out there" and so, he was less interesting than Ennis.

I could go on. But if you look past the "cowboys in lurv" aspect of the movie, and dig a little deeper and watch the performances and the actors express their characters between the lines, within the mores of the Western culture this movie takes place in - it's an amazing work of directing, acting and feeling.  HIGHLY recommended.