MOVIE OF THE YEAR:
So much has already been written about Brokeback Mountain that it’s hard to know what else to say. One must, though, clear up a small misunderstanding. The movie is said to be about “gay cowboys”, and that’s not quite right.
First, they are not gay as such. Yes, they do gay stuff (like man-on-man sex), but there’s a difference between doing gay stuff and being gay. “Gay” is a term that indicates self-identification as homosexual, usually male, and really came into its own only after the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York, which marked the official beginning of a gay liberation movement in the United States. Brokeback Mountain is very definitely set before that date (it begins in 1963) and is very specifically about men who do not have access to the affirming discourse of gay liberation. Besides, these two men state in so many words that they are “not queer”. This may seem a small point, but it is a key to the movie. It’s about not being gay.
Second, they aren’t really cowboys. They dress like cowboys, big hats and all, and have pretensions of some kind to that role (which may overlap considerably with masculinity itself in this context), but for most of the movie they are in fact glorified shepherds. Yes, one character does a bit of rodeo bull-riding, but such an activity is a kind of staged performance of cowboyness — and, in itself, that detail says something about the movie’s subtle commentary on role playing and self-identification. (Talking about the cowboy hats, I note that, in what is perhaps a sly dig at old-style westerns, one of the men wears a white hat and the other a black one.)
In the beautiful, perfectly paced first act of Brokeback Mountain, Ennis (Heath Ledger) and Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) meet when they both take the job of looking after a herd of sheep grazing on the side of the said mountain. Isolated together in this rough rural idyll, they discover each other in unexpected ways, and that is the start of a relationship that will last for another two decades or so. But it will have to be conducted in secret, because their society can’t deal with the idea of two men having a sexual liaison, let alone what is nowadays called a “domestic partnership”. This is not just a matter of time but place; we’re in Wyoming, the heart of conservative America. And it’s not as though a huge amount has changed — this is the state where a young man was famously murdered for being gay in 1998.
The second act of Brokeback Mountain (and it has only two) describes the aftermath of what happened between Jack and Ennis on the mountainside. The first act covers a month or two; the second moves across decades. Ang Lee, who got the Oscar for best director, and his scriptwriters Larry McMurty and Diana Ossana, who also got Oscars, deal expertly with this passing of time. There are no titles or captions to tell us what year we are now in, but a myriad details show the progress of the years. Clothing styles change and children appear and grow, as does Jack’s moustache.
Subtlety is the movie’s strong suit. Despite what may seem potentially shocking material (to most of the US, at least), the tone of the whole is one of delicacy; as he showed in previous movies such as Eat Drink Man Woman and Sense and Sensibility, not to mention Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Lee has a superb touch for the nuances of emotion. His perception of the human heart has more depth and resonance than a thousand ordinary Hollywood movies put together.
Our feelings for Jack and Ennis develop with their feelings for each other, and the cumulative effect of Brokeback Mountain is deeply involving and, finally, heart-breaking. In retrospect, I almost wished I had left at the halfway mark, before Ennis and Jack leave their mountainside and re-enter a world in which their relationship has no room to breathe. I would love to see the first half of Brokeback Mountain again, but I don’t think I’m strong enough to bear a repeat of the second.
It is probably fair to say that Lee simply told the story he wanted to tell, moulding it through wonderful performances and lovely camera-work, and that’s achievement enough. Make no mistake, Brokeback Mountain is a great film. Yet it’s a movie about the closet, and one feels a little distressed that the biggest “gay” movie ever is a tragedy. Certainly, it’s true to the period and locale in which it is set, and the lesson for today’s audiences couldn’t be clearer. But where, say, is the big gay superhero movie? When do we get to shoot and fuck our way across the screen with amoral abandon like James Bond does? The real triumph would be if no one felt sorry for us any more.