From Crouching Tiger to The Hulk, the movies of Ang Lee are about characters caught between the rock of tradition and the hard place of desire. His Brokeback Mountain features Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as Wyoming cowpokes who encounter bliss on a notch between the rocky Tetons and the unforgiving hard place of 1960s society.
This unforgettable tale of love and yearning finds the closemouthed Ennis Del Mar (Ledger) and the chatty Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal) up on Brokeback tending sheep during the summer of 1963.
They are lean specimens of manhood, too green to know the Victorian euphemism for homosexuality, "the love that dare not speak its name." They don't have a word for what happens to them one unseasonably cold summer night in the pup tent where they huddle together for warmth and soon find themselves locking lips and limbs. Long after they put out the campfire, the sparks between them continue to fly.
"I ain't queer," says the introverted Ennis the morning after. "Me neither," echoes the affable Jack. They revel in the elemental pleasures of Big Sky country, as startled by love as they are by a ravenous grizzly bear. Alone up there, there is no shame. It's down in cowtown Wyoming, where others are watching, that Ennis can't own his feelings for Jack.
Based on a 1997 Annie Proulx short story - whose bare bones have been fleshed out by screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana - Brokeback is both a biblical cautionary tale and a frontier saga.
Up in their Eden, Ennis and Jack taste the forbidden fruit. But though they reunite periodically at Brokeback for fishing trips where no trout are caught, when they're apart life is an expulsion from paradise. Or, if you prefer the Jean-Jacques Rousseau interpretation, in Big Sky country Ennis and Jack can be natural men amid the natural scenery, but back in so-called civilization they are shackled by the expectations of society and family.
This is the kind of thwarted love that goes back to Tristan and Isolde. To extend Proulx's metaphor, Jack has unlocked the tumblers of Ennis' heart and in panic Ennis throws away the key.
Much as it is about love, Brokeback is also a potent study of repression that comes alive in Ledger's shattering performance.
As Ennis, Ledger is so clenched that he mutters as though his jaw were wired shut; certainly his emotions are. When an early frost cuts short their summer of love, Ennis doesn't know what to say in parting to Jack. After a choked "So long," Ennis walks down the road a piece, finds an alley, and heaves his insides out and his head against the wall. To his regret he can't get past that hard place.
Ledger's Ennis poses the question that has dogged the western since Bronco Billy and John Wayne: Do strong, silent types embody potency and action, or are strength and silence symptoms of emotional lockdown? Lee would say the latter.
The filmmaker long has been a specialist at plumbing the bottomless grief of wounded adult children, from the closeted immigrant of The Wedding Banquet to the tradition-bound warriors of Crouching Tiger to the disinherited sisters of Sense and Sensibility.
Still, none of this prepared me for the depths to which Ledger goes here. He is nearly equaled by the performance of Michelle Williams (his real-life spouse), who plays Ennis' sad-eyed wife, Alma. She pines for Ennis as Ennis pines for Jack, and Jack despairs that Ennis won't come away with him.
While Gyllenhaal has playful puppy eyes and energy, his performance as Jack is a blur of mustaches, sideburns and spurs that never achieves the weight of Ledger's.
In the end, Lee's love story doesn't get beyond its characters' double bind. Stand up and rock the boat and risk drowning. Hunker down and row silently and live without love. That this double bind is not a relic of the 1960s makes Brokeback break your heart.
Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey
at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com.
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Brokeback Mountain
*** 1/2 (out of four stars)
Produced by Diana Ossana and James Schamus, directed by Ang Lee, written by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, based on the short story by Annie Proulx, photography by Rodrigo Prieto, music by Gustavo Santaolalla, distributed by Focus Features.
Running time: 2 hours, 14 mins.
Ennis Del Mar. . . Heath Ledger
Jack Twist. . . Jake Gyllenhaal
Alma. . . Michelle Williams
Lureen. . . Anne Hathaway
Joe Aguirre. . . Randy Quaid
Parent's guide: R (sexuality, nudity, profanity, some violence)
Playing at: area theaters