That "gay cowboy" movie is coming up on its tenth anniversary, just as "defense of marriage" laws are getting struck down every which way, but if you haven't seen it, you might not know that politics are hardly the point. It's simply a love story, and funnily enough, it's more of a gay love story for straight people than most anything else.
Directed by Ang Lee
Starring: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhall, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway, Randy Quaid
Rated R for sexuality, nudity, language and some violence.
Availability: Available to stream from Netflix and for rental from most streaming services and retailers
Admittedly, one of my major motivations for including this selection is for the controversy, but it is just as well deserving of inclusion because it's an excellent cinematic love story. Funnily enough, it seems to be even more memorable for the homophobes who haven't even seen the film (not homophobes by dint of having not seen it, but rather, those who haven't seen it because they're homophobes) than it is for anyone else. It launched a thousand gay cowboy jokes (like we weren't thinking it already) and created a whole new synonym for homosexual activities, and months, years even, after its release, conservative groups and Fox News personalities so regularly used it as a punching bag that one might suspect Focus Features paid them to keep it fresh in the public's mind. Made for a meager $14 million budget, it was one case of a movie for which the controversy really was tremendously beneficial, grossing a tidy sum of $178 million worldwide in box office rentals, and is undoubtedly one of the most culturally significant films of the 21st Century thus far.
Based on a 1997 short story by Annie Proulx, originally published in The New Yorker, it tells the story of two men, ranch hand Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and rodeo cowboy Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhall), who take a job herding sheep in Wyoming for the summer of 1963, up on the fictional Brokeback Mountain. Isolated on the mountain, one night, practically half-asleep, Jack and Ennis have a sudden and rough sexual encounter, which naturally results in a fairly awkward encounter the next day, but being forced to work together, they are also forced to face the situation head on. Each professes that they aren't "queer", but nevertheless an emotional and sexual bond develops between the two, and when the summer work ends, they reluctantly part ways to re-assimilate into society. Ennis marries his longtime sweetheart, Alma (Michelle Williams) and starts a family with two daughters, and despite being a loving father, the strains of this life begin to weigh on him. Jack wanders about life more aimlessly, riding in rodeos and looking for love in all the wrong places, eventually marrying Lureen Newsome (Anne Hathaway), a beautiful rodeo queen who brassy father is a farm equipment tycoon who blocks Jack's influence as a father at every turn. Years after that summer on Brokeback, Jack contacts Ennis, and they begin a series of passionate trysts under the thin guise of "fishing trips". Gradually, as neither is able to truly give themselves to their wives and their longing for one another is unsatisfied, their relationships deteriorate.
For a film so carefully crafted to avoid the appearance of an agenda, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is a tremendously divisive film, although many who entered the fray during its release and occasionally in the subsequent years have not even watched it. I believe the subject is related to an agenda, as well as the marketing, and that it may be used to further an agenda, but I'm doubtful that it is a film with an actual agenda. In any case though, I'd hardly hold it against a film if it did.
But Ang Lee is not making a political statement. There's some social commentary, but only where it's directly involved with the story. As a filmmaker, Lee's work is plainly a 'simple' love story, and maybe with time, it won't be so unusual, but at the time, it stands out because it is about a homosexual relationship. Perhaps due to the high profile debate it's been subjected to, audience interpretations vary wildly. The most common perception is simply that it's a gay love story, then there are plenty who argue that the characters are bisexual, having both married women. Others call it a story of loneliness, and further, some consider it left-wing gay rights propaganda. My personal interpretation is that it is most of all concerned with the miseries of suppression. The suppression of the characters' powerful feelings festers, destroying hopes and dreams, breaking hearts and so on.
Ennis seems to most represent the theme of suppression, his subtle performance emanating feelings of deadly constraint. He tells of his father showing him, as a child, the mangled remains of a hate crime against a gay man, and this provides a foundation for his intense denial of what he plainly feels, as opposed to Jack, who is more accepting of his longings, but is subject to Ennis' intentions. The mountain on which they first came to know one another, Brokeback Mountain, comes to be a sort of fantasy world where they get to be who they are, away from the suppression necessary of society. The scenes on the mountain are postcard picturesque, a mountainous paradise of rich greens and a sapphire blue sky. This is in contrast to the drab and uninteresting communities where they must always return to.
Their inability to be with one another makes their lives hell, and when they attempt to further confine their feelings and return to 'normal' lives, the women they marry are made miserable as well. It's no happy heart-warmer; it's a tragic tale of chances of happiness lost and the regret of not allowing happiness for one's self. The one very notable weakness to the film is that, ironically, I believe it was too restrained. Lee seems careful about keeping the appeal as wide as possible by tempering the passion of the film, if not the performances. I think it keeps things a bit at a distance, while it might have been more affecting with a more apparent romantic passion, but that might have been too uncomfortable for less indoctrinated types. Still, a love story is a love story and a heavier dose of soaring passion might have brought it closer to perfection.
By the time you get to the end though, the final shot carries such a wallop, you don't care much about the film's minor flaws.
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