Brokeback Mountain (2005) Reviews

• The Heart Of The Matter

  marcosaguado2005-12-16

  I didn't believe for a moment that the film could live up to the hype, or to some of the comments posted here, some of them read like love letters to the film, to the director and the actors. Well, now, after seeing the film, I feel like writing a love letter myself. The film took over my senses and transported me. The tragedy that envelopes the lives of Ennis and Jack is caused by an ancestral ignorance that is part of our DNA and if you don't believe me read some of the hateful comments posted here alongside the love letters. That's the heart of the matter. After the summer in Brokeback Mountain, Ennis and Jack go their separate ways and Ennis hits a wall with his fists crying, trying to destroy his longing, self loathing, guilt, horror. Imagine in a world without ignorance and therefore without hatred, Ennis and Jack could have celebrated their love and attempt an honest life together. Imagine also if things were the other way and heterosexuals were the dark minority, imagine falling in love with a girl and having to keep it secret, never been able to tell or to show publicly your love for her. Men like Ennis, and there are many, have to curve their own emotions and conform, entering and developing unhappy marriages and why? Read some of the comments here and you'll understand why. There is one that condemns the movie and what the movie may do for his kid and his vision of cowboys without actually having seen the movie! That's the heart of the matter. I will go and see the film again tomorrow, if I can get tickets, I'm taking with me a group of people that hate the movie already without having seen it. I won a bet so they will have to. I'm taking them to diner later to talk. I intend to report the results if you let me. But for the time being let me tell you, "Brokeback Mountain" is an extraordinary film. Jake Gyllenhaal, Ann Hathaway and the magnificent Michelle Williams give superb performances but it's Heath Ledger's film. He gives us something that nobody could possibly have expected because what he gives us is not only, honest and moving and powerful but totally and utterly new.

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• I wish I had known how sad this movie was going to be.

  fezziwiggs2007-01-29

  I just watched this movie last night for the first time. I wish I hadn't. It was one of the saddest films I have ever seen. It bothered me to no end. I kept waking up all night thinking about it. I feel terrible. The movie hit me especially hard because of my personal experiences. I spent several years living in the West and had a relationship with another man, who has since died. Watching this movie brought back many of the emotions I thought were long buried. I feel like grabbing my coworkers and talking them to death about this film, but I know they don't want to hear about it. I feel this driving need to keep talking about it - maybe if I keep talking about it I can get the ending to change. If I had known how this film was going to affect me - I wouldn't have watched it. It's too late now - I can't get it out of my head. I don't think I've ever been affected this much by a movie.

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• Two Men In Love at the Venice Film Festival

  bethlambert1172005-09-03

  It was a real ordeal to get into the screening. The anticipation was palpable. The film arrived surrounded by a plethora of innuendo. "A gay western" "Heath and Jake's hot scenes" As soon as the film started every imaginable preconception flew out of the auditorium. This is a remarkable, moving and powerful love story. The setting is that of a modern western "The Last Picture Show" comes to mind. Ang Lee's attention to detail verges on science fiction. You can actually smell the place. Extraordinary. I'm not going to reveal anything about the story - Gian Luigi Rondi a legendary Italian film critic, revealed the ending to a television audience, what was he thinking?! - The film will be enjoyed much more allowing the story to unfold without having passages underlined and attention drawn to this or that particular. I felt compelled to write this comment because I'm overwhelmed. It has changed my perception, I must confess, about certain aspect of same sex love because I didn't think of same sex when I was watching it, I saw two human beings (amazing performances by both actors)I have the feeling "Brokeback Mountain" will make history, deservedly so.

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• Finally A Film Which Gets it Right

  nycritic2006-01-12

  It was only time before a film about two men in love would get the treatment it gets in Ang Lee's BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, since up to now, films had either skirted the subject, reduced it to a peripheral, sanitized version of itself or given it the eye-candy treatment only meant at making a quick impression in the "Gay-Lesbian" category. The simple yet deceptive story of two people who meet, fall in love, but are unable to fulfill their love has been done over and over again from the male-female perspective (i. e. IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, THE AGE OF INNOCENCE, BRIEF ENCOUNTER), but never involving two men, and never this brutally honest. Of course, the dynamic of male love is different than male-female love only in genitalia. Jack and Ennis' first encounter while waiting for work, their isolation leading to each other's arms, is the stuff of every restrained romantic drama. The mechanism of two men falling in love here develops along the lines of homo-masculinity dictating patterns of behavior which both Jack and Ennis obey whether they know it or not. It comes to me as no surprise when, following their first sexual encounter (brutally executed with undertones of sadomasochism but true to the style of love involving alpha males), they revert to "not being queers" but cowboys who excuse "what happened" to liquor and "manly needs". Which of course verbalizes society's impositions of men having to be "men." Of course, things take a different turn and the heart wants what it wants. Once their work is done, Jack tries to keep their acquaintance alive but Ennis is so intensely closed and closeted to any possibility of emotions that he looks like he may implode at any moment and only once does he actually scream into his hat, bent over, as Jack drives away. The sound is a terrible, heart-rending puke of indescribable pain. What follows is a series of brief encounters that become more intense as the years go by, but at the same time destroys two marriages and consumes then to the end. Love is an uncontrollable emotion, and when two people who belong together despite their gender cannot fulfill their dreams it's only a matter of time when things reach a head. Again, the constraints of time and space interfere: Ennis cannot see a life outside what he knows, again more a product of the trauma of seeing something horrible as a child, and Jack, not having what he wants, has to take to meeting other men in sordid locations and re-create a semblance of an affair with a man who resembles Ennis. In presenting these situations as they are and not trying to pursue change in its characters, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is the love story that transcends gender, space, time, and proves that love -- even when tragic -- is universal. Even so, will straight people see the message behind the story? I believe straight women (and a few enlightened straight men) will be the ones drawn to view the movie over a majority of conservative idiots who still hold the idea of two men locked in intimacy as being repugnant and are ripping their feeble brains out over the quasi "gay agenda" that BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is trying to "convert people to homoesexuality". Sometimes it takes a movie like this which dares to take the risk and tell an unforgettable story rife in visual and emotional power -- true poetry in motion. All of the actors in BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN are flawless, and all of them have roles that in another story might have been bland stereotypes of predictable natures. Jake Gyllenhaal is smoldering longing at the beginning but becomes a broken man who explodes in rage when he realizes that twenty years have gone down the drain. Heath Ledger goes one better: his painful speech, furtive eyes, and inward body language expresses an overwhelming set of emotions which state that he'd never be able to be happy with anyone, and his final scene holding Jack's shirt comes more as an apology to Jack than an added moment of schmaltz. Michelle Williams plays a typical housewife who is witnessing something she can't understand. Linda Cardellini, who comes quite late in the film, initially appears to be just a waitress, but is the person who gives Ennis an advice about love. Anne Hathaway's role as Jack Twist's wife is much more tricky: is she aware of his gayness or is she really all about business and having a perfect home? I get the feeling her character knows more than she expresses, and her turning progressively blonde is a manifestation of her choosing to look the other way and live a life of bitter complacency, best expressed in her telling speech about how "men don't dance with their wives." If she only knew.

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• An Everlasting Gift for those who "get it".

  whiteoutofthemoon2006-04-24

  I saw this movie 3 months ago. Admittedly, I'm not really into these romantic/drama type movies. I'm a straight male and was persuaded to go by my girlfriend. I tend to think that I'm open-minded and the subject matter did not bother me too much. What I experienced from this movie is well beyond the romantic storyline. Now, 3 months later, I am still in awe of this amazing work of film-making and storytelling. I am also happy to see that there are millions of others out there who have had the good fortune to have been transformed by this masterpiece. The movie has made me wonder about my own life and choices......this really has nothing to do with the "gay" issue, but rather, how I've chosen my career path, past relationships, what my future holds. Will I find myself at a point, like Ennis, where happiness has slipped by due to my own fears and caution? Am I doomed to a life of misery, just because I was afraid to take that one chance? Truth is, I'm terrified, absolutely TERRIFIED, that I may end up one day like Ennis at the end, looking out of that lonely window, trapped in a wasted life full of regrets, only because I missed out on my chance for happiness. I've read some great reviews on this site, but I continue to be baffled by the level of ignorance of some of the reviews I've seen. I am not talking about the negative reviews...I can not expect everyone to like this movie. I'm talking about the reviews from people who have NOT even seen the movie.....I mean, what could you be possibly thinking to comment negatively on a movie you have not even seen, nor intend to see? I've read with great amusement those who have called this movie a "gay agenda", an attempt to "homosexualize" America, a travesty against the image of the "American cowboy". If you can just open up your feeble minds just one second to see that it is none of that at all. This movie is based on a short story by a mature woman; adapted screenplay by a great American writer who wrote great westerns; and directed by a Chinese family man and master filmmaker. Exactly where do you see a "gay agenda" in there? What possible reason would any of these people have to "promote" homosexuality? Are you so out of touch with reality and paranoid that you would think that all the studios in Hollywood got together for a secret meeting one day, and decided that it was time to spread a gay agenda across the US and world, and that this was the movie to do it? And do you think that there were some marketing geniuses who created all the "hype" falsely, and therefore that is why there has been so much talk about the movie? I'm just frustrated with all the stupidity and sheer ignorance and intolerance that I have seen and read about this movie. It is a story, a great story, and an amazing act of STORYTELLING......that is all you need to know about it; no politics, no sacrilege, JUST A STORY, about two men, at this one time, in this one place. Can you understand that very simple premise? I have a good friend who I used to consider "sensitive". She would cry when hearing a certain Mozart symphony, or be in tears when she saw a Botticelli painting for the first time. I mean, WTF, crying over music or a painting? I used to tease her about that, but instead of being embarrassed, she would look at me, really in pity,..."your loss". It was later that I came to realize that there was really something wrong with me, not her. She had the capacity and "gift" to feel the power of such masterpieces, and because of that, her life is more enriched. While I appreciate the mastery of classical composers or artists, I just did not "get it". That's how it goes with this movie, and I'm happy to say I "get it". There are those who "get it", and those who don't. And those who do will have an impossible time explaining why to those who don't. It's not really your fault that you may not get it...you just don't, no worries. But I think it's funny if you are frustrated or poke fun at those who do. Because, in essence, we're not the ones with the problem. I feel my life and outlook have been made better, and I'm a better person, because of this one movie, a masterpiece. Can a movie really do that? Crazy stuff, huh? And if you have a problem with that, do you really think I care? It's your loss, you know? I have nothing to prove to you; it's not my job to convince you. For those who "get it", we're the lucky ones, and it'll be our little secret. For the rest of you, I hope you find the inspiration for your life in some other form, before it's way too late; or else, like Ennis, you may quickly find yourself metaphorically shuffling around all alone in an old trailer....forever doomed to wonder what could have been.

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