Alternative Film Guide

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Director: Ang Lee. Screenplay: Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, from E. Annie Proulx’s short story. Cast: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway, Randy Quaid

MY OWN PRIVATE DUNGEON

Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain is without a doubt a culturally significant motion picture. The same-sex romantic drama has won numerous awards, has been discussed all over the media, and has been labeled "groundbreaking" by numerous film critics. Of course, the fact that those critics’ knowledge of film history only goes as far back as Revenge of the Sith should not be held against Lee’s film. Yet, except for a few touching moments in its second half Brokeback Mountain fails to involve chiefly because the central relationship between a Wyoming ranch hand and a second-rate rodeo cowboy remains stubbornly underdeveloped.

Although screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana have elongated E. Annie Proulx’s terse short story considerably more than necessary — Brokeback Mountain clocks in at 134 minutes — they have failed to convey the emotional basis for the undying bond between the two men. Compounding matters, stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal share precious little chemistry in their moments together, thus leaving it up to the viewer’s imagination to fill in the story’s romantic gaps. In addition to Rodrigo Prieto’s lyrical cinematography and Gustavo Santaolalla’s sublimely haunting score, what helps lift Brokeback Mountain from the realm of averageness is not its pseudo-subversive approach to the Western genre, but its underlying theme of the high cost of life denied.

Generally remaining quite faithful to Proulx’s story, first published in The New Yorker in October 1997, McMurtry and Ossana’s screenplay (see synopsis) follows the (mostly) long-distance, twenty-year love affair between the stoic, uncommunicative Ennis Del Mar (Ledger) and the friendly, lively Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal), who get acquainted while herding sheep on Wyoming’s majestic (and fictitious) Brokeback Mountain in the summer of 1963.

Missing from the screenplay, however, is a crucial detail found in the short story: A (however brief) description of encroaching intimacy, for Ennis and Jack fall in love after having formed a deep emotional and psychological bond — the result of several nights chatting by the campfire. In the film, Ennis is so uptight he hardly ever utters a word, and when he does talk — in a thick-as-mud drawl — he does it through his teeth, making the little he says nearly unintelligible.

Besides manly good looks, the on-screen Ennis doesn’t offer much else that would justify Jack’s strong attraction to him. Additionally, there are no sparks between the two men that could indicate any sort of mutual carnal interest. Thus, when the first moment of physical closeness comes along, it feels as gratuitous as it is absurd. Staged like similar sequences in hardcore films — a problem also found in Proulx’s story — there’s little that’s tentative about the sexual encounter even though it’s supposed to be their first ever: Ennis, after a little necking, is all ready to go. He unbuttons his pants and penetrates Jack, who, instead of hollering in pain, takes it all in like a real Man of the West - or rather, like any number of well-rehearsed adult-film stars. Mercifully, the scene ends before Jack can moan "gun’s goin’ off" as he does in the story. (Those who think of sex between cowboys as a "subversive" novelty surely have never heard of gay erotica.)

The next day, Ennis and Jack are in love. Magnificent landscapes and great sex can truly work wonders in the human heart. (Even though the two young men are loath to think of themselves as "queer.") Once their summer job is over, they part ways. During a brief reunion four years later, Jack is ready to set up house with Ennis, who refuses because he is terrified of being found out. That phobia comes from a backstory in which Ennis, while still a boy, is shown a gay man tortured and killed by bigoted Westerners - as if such trauma would be necessary to justify a small-town man’s desire to keep his homosexual inclinations hidden deeply in the closet. (In a shameless plot contrivance, Ennis’ fears turn out to be, let’s say, potentially prophetic.)

Jack’s frustration with Ennis leads to excessive drinking and to the search for companionship elsewhere. "You have no idea how bad it gets!" he yells at Ennis in the film’s climactic confrontation scene. "… I wish I knew how to quit you." Such all-consuming yearning is meant to be the result of a communion of souls, but that communion is nowhere to be found in the interplay between the two characters. Part of the problem lies with Ang Lee’s direction.

First I must say that Lee, who has dealt with similar themes before in Hsi yen / The Wedding Banquet and The Ice Storm, does a generally good job in terms of skirting melodramatic pitfalls, and in capturing the magic of Brokeback Mountain and the vastness of the American West (with the assistance of Rodrigo Prieto’s miraculous lenses). The film’s first shot, later repeated under radically different circumstances, is one of the most striking ever put on screen. Nonetheless, the director fails to bring out the heat of passion when Ennis and Jack are together, and their inner emptiness when they are not. Their longing for one another is communicated through the dialogue and through a couple of bear hugs and kisses, but it’s noticeably absent from the film’s atmosphere until the very final scene. To be fair, I must add that the two leading men are also to blame for those shortcomings.

Much of the publicity surrounding Brokeback Mountain has focused on presenting Ledger and Gyllenhaal as hetero off-screen studs playing homo on-screen studs, as if "acting gay" - a couple of rough kissing scenes and a simulated sex act - is per se both a display of thespian courage and an example of great screen acting. Whatever those actors’ sexual orientation may be, perhaps it’s true that they have been brave to tackle those roles. (Just think of the — nonexistent — horrors that befell, say, Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve following their passionate kissing scene in the mystery thriller Deathtrap, which by the way was released more than twenty years ago.)

That said, in their scenes together Ledger and Gyllenhaal are utterly incapable of conveying, whether through a spark in the eye or a quivering in the voice, the passion that Ennis and Jack are supposed to feel for one another. The chemistry between the two stars, an absolute must in such a film, is painfully lacking in Brokeback Mountain. (For real chemistry between two guys on-screen, check out Daniel Day-Lewis and Gordon Warnecke in Stephen Frears’ 1985 drama My Beautiful Laundrette, or Yehuda Levi and Ohad Knoller in Eytan Fox’s 2002 - talk about subversive - military drama Yossi & Jagger.)

There are other problems with Ledger’s and Gyllenhaal’s performances as well. Despite a few lapses (most notably during Ennis’ emotional confrontation with Jack near the film’s finale), the Australian Ledger creates a convincing Wyoming cowpoke, and his dramatic range is at times quite impressive. Ledger’s final moment in Brokeback Mountain, for instance, is nothing short of masterful. On the down side, he never makes his prototypal silent cowboy either mysterious or alluring enough to justify Jack’s perennial longing for him.

Gyllenhaal, for his part, succeeds only in showing the earnest efforts of a mellow big-city actor trying to pass for a rough cowboy. (In Proulx’s short story, those men are not only truly rough, they’re also unattractive. Ennis and Jack have been considerably softened and prettified for the screen.) Moreover, the role of the emotionally torn Jack Twist is way beyond Gyllenhaal’s thus far limited range. When Jack has a climactic outburst during his last meeting with Ennis at Brokeback, Gyllenhaal gives his all but, tripping on his erratic Texanized accent, he fails to fully express Jack’s final eruption of anger, sadness, and despair. Also, though in their mid-20s, neither actor is at all believable as a teenager in the beginning of the film or as a man in his late 30s at the film’s conclusion. (The poor makeup job, especially on Gyllenhaal’s face, doesn’t help matters any.)

Ironically, Ledger has great chemistry in his scenes with (his real-life partner) Michelle Williams, who, as Ennis’ frustrated wife, Alma, provides the film with its most touching performance. Williams’ reaction when she sees her husband kissing Jack in front of their apartment building is a classic moment of great screen acting; the actress alone gives pathos to a scene that could easily have derailed into farce. She makes palpable Alma’s sense of confusion, knowing too much while being incapable of expressing her feelings to her husband or possibly even to herself. The reasons for her silence are never explained, but the actress carries her simmering resentment with such dignity that her motives almost don’t matter.

As cuckolded wife number two, Lureen, Anne Hathaway has some good light moments at first, but once her character goes dramatic she is thrown completely out of her element. On the other hand, Randy Quaid is outstanding in a few brief scenes as the tough rancher who gets Ennis and Jack their fateful summer job, while Kate Mara does a lovely turn as Ennis’ eldest daughter, Alma Jr.

One way of looking at Brokeback Mountain is to interpret the feelings those men have for one another as a love less for who they really are than for what they represent. McMurtry, Ossana, and Lee make sure we understand that heterosexual couples lead a hellish life, what with obnoxious in-laws, bratty little children, unfulfilling jobs, and worst of all, no one around the house with whom tough guys can do a little macho wrestling. (Michelle Williams’ Woman of the West is just too damn soft for such fun stuff. I swear, where’s Mercedes McCambridge when you most need her?)

In Proulx’s short story, the two lovers never return to Brokeback after their initial meeting, though the locale remains the symbol of their thwarted relationship. In the film, they return to that serenely beautiful landscape (shot in Alberta, Canada) each time they can escape from their respective real lives. One "negative" question the film avoids is: How long would Ennis and Jack’s love have lasted had they chosen to spend more than a couple of times a year together?

Instead, Brokeback Mountain opts for a "positive" — though, admittedly, equally valid — question. How much more fulfilling would have been the lives of those two cowboys had the pathologically uptight Ennis gotten over his fear of coming out of the closet? Even if their love was not to last, they would at least have known that they did try.

In the film’s heart-wrenching final scene, as Gustavo Santaolalla’s strings play one of the saddest slow crescendos on record, Ennis is by himself in his trailer, with the life he chose not to live represented by two blood-stained shirts and a faded picture of Brokeback Mountain hanging on his closet door. Outside, out of his reach, lies a patch of green grass.

"What other dungeon is so dark as one’s own heart!" Nathaniel Hawthorne inquires in The House of the Seven Gables. "What jailer so inexorable as one’s self!" The uninvolving Ennis & Jack romance may form the core of Brokeback Mountain, but what gives the film its emotional resonance is the underlying tragedy of a self-imposed unrealized life. Through Ennis’ self-imprisonment, Brokeback Mountain reminds us all — regardless of sexual orientation — of the opportunities we have chosen to miss in our lives in order to conform. And of how our existence has been diminished as a result.

Synopsis:

1963: One early summer morning in Signal, Wyoming, two 19-year-olds, taciturn ranch hand Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and second-rate rodeo cowboy Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), meet while looking for a job. The local rancher, Joe Aguirre (Randy Quaid), hires them for the summer to work as sheepherders on the idyllic Brokeback Mountain.

While up on Brokeback, Jack and Ennis develop a friendship of sorts. Even though Ennis hardly ever talks, Jack has taken a liking to him. One night, when the two sleep together in the same tent, they have sex. The next morning, they’re in love - though both men are loath to think of themselves as "queer." From then on, they spend their time carousing, wrestling, and, sometimes, either shoving or punching one another.

Once their summer idyll is over, Jack and Ennis part ways. Ennis remains in Wyoming, where he marries his old sweetheart, Alma (Michelle Williams). In order to support his wife and his growing family - they have two daughters - Ennis must work hard to eke out a living.

Jack moves to Texas, where he meets fellow rodeo performer and wealthy heiress Lureen Newsome (Anne Hathaway). Lureen falls for him, whereas Jack knows a good opportunity when he sees one. The two get married and have a son, despite her father’s blatant disapproval of the union.

Four years later, Jack returns to Wyoming for a brief visit. He and Ennis meet again, and it’s as if they had never been away from each other. Alma catches them kissing, but keeps mum about it. She must now silently cope with the unpleasant fact that her husband is cheating on her with another man, whom he will be seeing on "fishing trips" about twice annually for the next 20 years.

Jack wants more, but Ennis is unwilling to move in with him. Recalling an incident in his youth, he’s afraid that if they set up house together they will be murdered by gay bashers.

Eventually, Jack and Ennis are united - though not in the way either one would have intended.

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN - Notes / Trivia

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN - Awards

MONSTER’S BALL: Film Review

BIG EDEN: Film Review

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE

THE FAMILY STONE: Film Review

SIDEWAYS

Ramon Novarro’s Lloyd Wright House

Teresa Wright

Golden Globes’ Firsts and Mosts

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