Brokeback Mountain

December 29, 2005 - "I wish I knew how to quit you" - Jack to Ennis, at their final time together at Brokeback Mountain.

Definitely one of the films that I have been anticipating all year, Brokeback Mountain exceeded all my expectations (and they were quite high) and is arguably my favourite film of the year.

Brokeback Mountain had been one of the films that we wanted to see at the Toronto Film Festival, but we weren't able to get tickets and had to wait until it came out this month. Based on a short story by Annie Proulx, who also wrote The Shipping News (which was made into a movie a few years ago), the movie stars Heath Ledger as Ennis Del Mar and Jake Gyllenhaal as Jack Twist as two cowboys who fell in love in 1960s Wyoming.

The story is simple and honest. Ennis and Jake are hired to herd sheep on Brokeback Mountain. On a cold summer night, the two huddle together to keep warm - and then "it" happens (for the record, the sex scene is less than a minute long). They aren't sure why it happened, but after that night, the unexplainable bond between them begins to grow.

When the job ends, they part and both try to move on with their lives. Ennis marries his sweetheart, Alma (played by my favourite ex-Dawson's Creeker, Michelle Williams), while Jack marries rich cowgirl Lureen, (played by Anne Hathaway of the Princess Diaries). Through marriages, children, and new jobs, we see how that one summer on Brokeback Mountain has changed their lives...

Years later, the two men meet again and it is clear that bond between the two never diminished. For the next 20 years, Jack and Ennis continue to reunite at Brokeback Mountain for "fishing trips" where no fish is ever caught - to be away from a society where their love for each other is forbidden and taboo. Though they try to honour their commitment to their family, we see how their dishonesty about themselves, and their love for each other, impact the lives of their wives and children.

This is not just some story about two guys who get horny one night and decide to have sex - it's a story about emotions, about true feelings, and about learning to love another human being. Ang Lee, the director, made the movie thought provoking, relevant, and honest. The two characters are real and being gay myself, definitely relate-able. Watching Ennis trying to understand and cope with the way he feels for Jack is heartbreaking; on the other hand, I also can relate to Jack's disappointment and anger for Ennis' inability to reciprocate Jack's feelings for him - while Jack and Ennis have Brokeback Mountain, at one point, all I had were Sundays...but that's another blog entry right there!

One question that I've read in reviews that people ask most:

When exactly did they fall in-love? Why are these men in love in the first place?

My answer would be they fell in love after their first sexual encounter. They had sex, enjoyed it, and did it again many times that summer. What happened as a result of it? they developed an intimate bond with each other. They shared something with one another than no one could ever understand. When they were apart, the intimacy was missed by both - and they tried to replace it with other people (Ennis, by marrying Alma; Jack, by picking up guys in bars and in Mexico). It was the longing for that intimacy and the fact that they have a special bond with each other - that grew into love.

Some people think that you need to watch them go on dates, find out that they have common interests, etc, in order to understand how these two men could be in love with one another. Those are only superficial things. They didn't develop a 20 year romance because they got each other off all summer, but it was because they created an intimate bond with each other that they wished they could keep, but realize they couldn't.

Kinda hard to explain - but for whatever reason, I "got it" right away (hopefully I got it right though!).

The movie isn't perfect - Ledger's accent in particular (I had problems hearing him at one point) - but the outstanding acting (Ledger, Williams, and Gyllenhaal all deserve Oscar nominations, while Hathaway's final scene is simply brilliant), the breathtaking scenery and the tragic love story made the film both haunting and unforgettable.