For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are those, ‘it might have been’.

John Greenleaf Whittier

Assuming that you have had an unrequited, forbidden or impossible love in your life, this is the film for you. Even if you haven’t, this is still the film for you. Set against a backdrop of breathtaking and lonely wilderness, ‘Brokeback Mountain’ is based on a short story by writer Annie Proulx and directed by Ang Lee. It is a tale of impossible love and its tragedy and beauty in the unlikely setting of the hypermasculine west.

It opens with an early dawn shot that pans across a vast open space in Wyoming, lingering on a truck making its way along a deserted highway. Moments later, the truck pulls to a stop and a figure jumps out and walks toward what appears to be a deserted trailer. Leaning up against the side of the trailer, the young man waits and lights a smoke. A few minutes later, a battered pickup roars in and another young man jumps out, kicks his truck and curses. The two men eye each other casually – this shot says more in a few seconds than five minutes of dialogue could and pretty much sets out what you need to know through the rest of the film. Days later, after seeing the film, you might find yourself coming back to that shot.

A third, older man arrives, opens the trailer and the two men waiting come in – the older man explaining the job that they’ve both come for. The job involves riding up into the mountains and setting up camp to keep an eye on a large herd of sheep to protect them from predators. The man takes pains to emphasize the fact that one of them is to spend each night among the herd with no fire or light – something that for whatever reason, is illegal or outside the rules. This is to last for the whole summer, til the sheep are brought back down. The two men, Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) are hired and proceed to head off into the mountains, commenting on the unfairness of the arrangement.

The men begin to bond and to get friendlier, the outgoing Jack, playing with and teasing the quiet introverted Ennis. Ennis, a man of few words, conveys his feelings in his facial expressions and begins to open up to Jack. One day, Jack comments that Ennis “had just said more words than he had in two weeks” and Ennis replies that he’d probably said more words than he had in over a year. After a bout of drinking on a cold night, they huddle together for warmth in their tent and find themselves having sex. Although Ennis seems to be regretful about it the next morning and declares that there was nothing to it – Ennis: “I ain’t queer.’ Jack: “Me neither.” Jack proves that Ennis’s protestations are just so much bluster as the two continue to spend each night together in the other’s arms and drift into a very real love affair.

The story, which begins in the early 60s, covers a span of approximately twenty years as Ennis and Jack separate at the end of their summer work, their relationship left hanging. It seems symbolic on some level – when first taking the job that involved doing something outside the rules, to their relationship, which was, itself ‘outside the rules’. They move on, each marrying a woman and having children. Then, Ennis receives a postcard from Jack, saying that he is coming up to Wyoming from Texas where he now lives, and wants to see Ennis.

Ennis tells his wife that Jack is an old fishing buddy and that they will be going off for a few days to hang out and fish. As Ennis turns this over in his mind, you can see the joy and excitement on his usually taciturn face. They head back to the place of their beginning, Brokeback Mountain. Once together, it’s as if no time has passed. This cycle repeats itself over the years, as outwardly, they appear to get on with their lives but it can’t go on like this and things start to unravel. Real life begins to intrude and society is just not ready for their choice of lifestyle, at least not in that time and place.

The performances in this film are magnificent – Heath Ledger, as the conflicted Ennis, speaks volumes with just a twitch of his mouth or an eyebrow or grimace. It is an extremely subtle but powerful display of emotion with not a hint of artifice or acting – the depth of which is what elevates this from just a film to an emotional experience. Thinking back on his earlier work, I couldn’t recall seeing anything like this from him until I remembered his small but wrenching part as the suicidal young prison guard in the film, ‘Monster’s Ball’. Jake Gyllenhaal is also strong in his character as the more assertive of the two. While outwardly seeming more conflicted and unhappy than Ennis, you begin to realize that this may not be the case as he actively seeks his true self. The chemistry between the two is real. The women in this film are equally important, Michelle Williams as Alma, Ennis’s wife, Anne Hathaway as Jack’s, and in a small but quietly intense spot, Roberta Maxwell as Jack’s mother. They function as points of conflict but more important, underscore a women’s ‘conspiracy of silence’, in which it becomes clear that they know what goes on but choose to remain quiet about it.

In the New York Times book review (NY Times Book Review – Sunday, Jan 8), there was a short section in which the writer, Annie Proulx, described what triggered the idea for this story – she notices, in a Wyoming bar, an older ranch hand, maybe in his late 60s, not paying attention to the women but to the young cowboys shooting pool:

Maybe he was following the game, maybe he knew the players, maybe one was his son or nephew, but there was something in his expression, a bitter kind of longing, that made me wonder if he was country gay. Then I began to consider what it might have been like for him.

Between Annie Proulx who wrote this initially as a short story , Larry McMurtry, noted western novelist (‘Lonesome Dove’, ‘The Last Picture Show’, ‘Hud’) who did the screenplay and Ang Lee (‘The Ice Storm’, ‘Sense and Sensibility’) who directed, they have created a masterpiece of a film – so powerful in its dialogue, acting and cinematography that it transcends gender or sexual orientation in its portrayal of a tragic love. You become so engaged with these two characters, that they both are men ceases to be of any importance other than it is what ultimately keeps them apart. Ang Lee has done everything brilliantly, from his beautiful frames to the lingering silences to capturing Ledger’s shy little smile. This film will stay with and haunt you for a while after – the last line of the film, “Jack, I swear”, the words understated, lasting and reminiscent of the love that might’ve been.

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Marc Goldin currently lives in Chicago, with three cats, each one more long-haired than the last. Interests have ranged from medieval monasticism to discontinued stations on the London Underground – literary likes too diverse (some would say schizo) to list here although the last several years have been witness to an intimacy with Scottish and Irish literature. American Southern and Beat era lit also account for some of the ‘missing years’. Music tastes run the gamut from Cuban Danzon to Ska (all three waves but having a specific attachment to the second, two-tone period) to the Tuvan throat singers. Has written book reviews for a now defunct Irish literature site and has several short stories in various stages of development. Mad for black and white photography and aspires to someday have a complete collection of photos documenting every close in the Grassmarket area of Edinburgh. Works in the IT dept. of a French company in the current political climate. In football, supports Chelsea, Hibs, and for the sake of employment security, Marseille. For more articles and reviews by Marc on The New Review, click here.

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© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.

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