Emerging as the frontrunner in this year's Oscar race, Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain at first might seem an unlikely candidate: It's a love story about two men that features frank sexual content and a decidedly gay-friendly message. Films about homosexuality are nothing new, of course, nor are films about forbidden passions, but most gay movies are either on the fringes of cinema, or if they make it into the mainstream, are more about disease (Philadelphia) than love.
At the same time, Lee has made a career out of taking film genres and concepts unfamiliar to the mainstream and making them palatable both to average filmgoers as well as middlebrow critics and awards-mongers. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a martial arts film for people who don't like martial arts films; Hulk turned a comic-book movie into a studied rumination on father-son relations; and The Ice Storm made a well-regarded hipster novel into a digestible but respectable film. Likewise, Brokeback Mountain is a gay movie for people who are put off by gay movies, or perhaps even for people who are put off by gays.
That's not to say Lee pulls punches—this is not a coy film. But he brings all of his classy restraint to bear on the story of two roughneck cowboys engaged in a hidden love affair for nearly two decades. Brokeback's sex may be sudden and jarring at first, but at its heart it's an old-fashioned love story—Romeo & Juliet with gay cowboys.
In Wyoming in 1963, Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) show up in the small town of Signal to work for rancher Joe Aguirre (Randy Quaid). They spend the summer up on the movie's namesake mountain, watching over Aguirre's sheep and unexpectedly falling in love. The more sensitive and experienced Jack coaxes the gruff, taciturn Ennis first into a late-night encounter and later into a relaxed and joyous relationship that lasts until a snowstorm drives them down off the mountain.
Over the next 20 or so years, the two settle in different parts of the country, get married, have children and pursue careers. Ennis marries his longtime girlfriend Alma (Michelle Williams) and drifts through ranching jobs in Wyoming, while Jack meets a rich rodeo queen (Anne Hathaway) and becomes a successful farm equipment salesman. A few times a year, the pair get together for "hunting and fishing" trips that allow them a handful of short days to recapture the idyllic summer they spent on Brokeback Mountain.
The story is all the more heartbreaking for taking place in 1963 rather than 1863; Ennis and Jack are cowboys in an age when cowboys are an anachronism in most places, and their struggle with sexuality comes at a time when gay people in large cities are finally beginning to break out of society's locked closet. For people in rural Wyoming and Texas (where Jack settles), though, homosexuality remains a dangerous abomination, and Jack's oft-stated dreams of opening a ranch where he and Ennis can live together must remain in the realm of fantasy.
The film documents not only the toll that a homophobic society takes on two men in love, but also on their families and loved ones. The pair's wives each deal with their husbands' predilections in their own way, but there's never a sense that traditional family life is fulfilling or happy for the men or the women. Ennis' strained but loving relationship with his eldest daughter is one of the movie's strongest and most subtle elements, and brings home the costs of societal pressure in a way that people from all walks of life can understand.
Lee's sense of visual and emotional beauty serves him well in making this story universal, and once Ennis and Jack's relationship is established, the passionate kisses and hot embraces give way to almost brotherly hugs. It's not squeamishness that drives this shift, but an honest portrayal of a relationship that, like any, becomes more about companionship than passion as the years pass. Too often, films about homosexuality are only interested in portraying the extremes, and Lee goes a long way toward engendering acceptance with his measured and comfortable portrait. Even so, there is a certain restrained, stately quality to the film that the director brings to all his work, and it tends to distance the audience from the sweaty realities of what's happening on-screen.
That distance is both a blessing and a curse, opening up the story to a wide audience but also closing off some of its potential power. Luckily, Ledger and Gyllenhaal make up for any fervor that Lee might lack, giving raw and real performances that complement each other well. Although Ledger's forceful performance has been getting all the awards attention, Gyllenhaal is very good as well, and the relationship between the two is romantic and believable. Brokeback Mountain may not be the best movie ever made about homosexuality, but it's more than deserving to be the one that finally gets average viewers to pay attention.