Genre: Drama
Source: USA (2005)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Netflix Streaming
Grade: A-
Brokeback is one of those movies that has been on my radar for ages but that I just never got around to seeing--not because, as my high school students would seem to assume, of some sort of concern over the subject matter, but rather because I have to be in the right mood to sit down and watch a dramatic romance, whether it's gay, straight, or something else. It's just not my typical wheelhouse.
But man, this is a good movie.
I read a piece on Ang Lee once--perhaps around the time Life of Pi came out--where it talked about him as being a filmmaker whose main focus is compassion and empathy for others. That analysis made his filmography click for me in unexpected ways--from the slowness and stillness of The Hulk to the sentimentalism of Crouching Tiger or, more recently, the aforementioned Life of Pi. And I think that's what I tend to enjoy about his films. He has a softness to him, unusual in a filmmaker who can also do action so well, that transcends culture, language, and era in order to try and get at what it means to be human and to recognize the human in others. That's part of what I seek to cultivate in my reading and especially in my teaching, so it makes sense that I would find some sort of connection with Lee's work.
Brokeback is exactly what you've heard it is: gay cowboy love story. And yet to leave it at that is to minimize what it's about and make it into a punchline, to miss the purpose all together. The film is about the fear of being yourself, about the cost of wearing a mask, and yes about the pain of homophobia and the denial of the heart. With few words, Lee transforms Jack and Ennis from a ready-made cliche to living, breathing individuals with conflicting emotions, desires, responsibilities, and beliefs. They do not understand themselves--at least as the film begins--but they understand what they feel, and in a way that is where we all find ourselves, whether in matters of the heart, or identity, or belief. Their relationship is passionate, but it also has a tenderness they don't allow themselves in any other facet of their lives, and so they put up walls around themselves that not only keep out others who love them but that cut themselves off from other bonds as well. It is a story of pain--the pain of the closeted gay man, the pain of the abandoned wife, the pain of the child of divorce. Their actions--even their justifiable need to love one another--demands a cost from those around them, and eventually the weight of those costs holds them down.
Heath Ledger in this performance is just as much a revelation to me as he was in The Dark Knight, and in fact comparing those two roles could practically be a master class in acting. He makes Ennis smolder--with desire, with desperation--in ways Jake Gyllenhaal can't quite keep up with, though his performance is solid as well. And those final shots--killer. Talk about an emotional knife to the gut.
The film's soundtrack is also excellent, with a haunting main tune that will be stuck in my head for weeks.
The film isn't perfect. Sometimes time passes too quickly as we jump forward to see the effects of their love story played out over decades. And frankly the age make-up can't quite keep up, especially on a face as boyish as Gyllenhaal's. Even at the two hours and fifteen minutes, I didn't feel like the Anne Hathaway story line got enough time to play out, and there were a few slow passages that could have been kicked up a notch.
Still, overall, what a movie. Really beautiful. Really moving. Really worthwhile.
Alternate Film Title: Not needed. Brokeback Mountain is pretty spot on.
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