The Greatest Films #11: Brokeback Mountain

Background:

Years ago I was watching this movie in my college suite and a roommate walked in and called me a gay lover. As an American male I admittedly snickered at the comment to save my masculinity, but it highlighted the fact that we haven’t changed much since the sixties and maybe we’ll never change in my lifetime.  But Brokeback thankfully isn’t about the “big picture”. It doesn’t need to be. Had it been about acceptance of homosexuality or love between men I think it would have failed. Instead, it is focuses very specifically on its characters, more so Ennis then even Jack Twist.

Much of the the screen time of Brokeback Mountain is devoted to Ennis Delmar played by Heath Ledger. Ledger was deserving of the Oscar, but there is a pretty good chance that Philip Seymour Hoffman’s performance as Truman Capote is one of the best screen performances of all time.

It is odd that so many Hollywood actors turned down the movie out of fear of what it would do to their career and how it would be reflected in a homophobic society. It took courage to be in the movie.

What is more impressive is that Ang Lee, in a movie that could so clearly have been a laughable melodrama, uses restraint and focus in his approach. There is such subtlety and quiet pain here that we understand so much from so little.

What it is about:

Well, it is complicated. Most macho douche-bags would label it a gay cowboy movie, which it is at certain moments. But I hate using the word gay, or straight, or any of those labels for what either of the characters are. I think these men are more complicated than that. Though Jack Twist is likely a homosexual.

Ennis and Jack meet as teenagers in the middle of nowhere and ranch for weeks on a mountain. They drunkenly have sex and form deep-seated feelings for each other that last for decades.

Gay romance novels, I’m told, is a popular romance novel genre, as is the gay manga books “Yaoi” in Japan. I can understand why the tale of “forbidden love” rings true with so many people. But I think taking Brokeback solely as a romance movie is degrading its characters and universality.

The movie focuses more on the pain and desire for something and never being able to get it — an idea that is likely to ring true with anyone.

Why it is a great film:

This might be Ang Lee at his all-time best. It is hard to place what all of Ang Lee’s movies are “about”, but Brokeback makes it clear: His movies involve human beings who desire something, but society won’t let that “thing” be achieved.

His subtly in this movie cannot be overpraised. We learn much from very little.

There is a moment when Jack Twist and his wife are eating and she mentions so lightly how odd it is that men won’t dance with their wives. Is that a subtle hint at Jack Twist not engaging in sex with her?

Also, her coldness while speaking to Ennis on the phone after Jack’s death suggest more than she says. There is a moment where she mentions Jack wanting his ashes spread on Brokeback mountain. Ennis mentions that’s where they used to ranch, she lets out a little noise as if she’s holding back tears. What did she know about him? There could have been a huge sobbing scene, but the audience is just left to be curious about what pain the situation has caused her and why.

The best scene maybe is the stark scene at the end where Ennis stands alone in Jack’s room. How Jack dealt with such drabness is beyond anything I can imagine. At the end of this scene Jack’s mom desperately asks Ennis to come back and visit, as if just seeing another human being filled some void of loneliness she has.

Another reason this movie is great is cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, another member of the Mexican New Wave, who more-or-less got his start on the masterpiece Amorros Perros and has since shot every film for Alejandro González Iñárritu. Some of the best photography of that decade was in Brokeback. There are shots of sweeping beauty that look like they were taken from a national geographic magazine. The horizons seem to begin only one-third of the way up the screen, letting the sharp blue of the skys occupy much of the frame.

Gustavo Santaolalla is one of the most talented composers working right now (check out his Biutiful soundtrack if you don’t believe me) and the musical pieces in Brokeback set the tone for the movie and never lets up. The opening notes of the movie are just so perfect. The movie immediately feels like it is about nobody from nowhere, who doesn’t got nothing.

If you simplify the movie to just a movie about two gay people who can’t be together, you’re simplifying the possibility of greater meaning. It is so true that the more you focus on something the more it applies to everyone.

-Collin