.: Roberts' Reviews - Movie Reviews :.

Review By Mike Lippert:
One of the saddest scenes in Ang Lee's new film Brokeback Mountain is one in which nothing at all happens, for something to happen in such an instant would be an easy entry point into this film. But this is not an easy film; it is complex and emotionally devastating. It, like its characters, is hardened on the exterior, but if you are willing to dig, it captures some of the truest moments of any other film to come along in recent history.
The scene involves Ennis' (Heath Ledger) wife Alma (Michelle Williams). She is sitting at the kitchen table, just having secretly witnessed her husband kissing Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), a man who Ennis claims was an old fishing buddy, who he is leaving with for a weekend in the mountains. "Aren't you forgetting something?" She says, sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for him to bid her off. "Right." He says, picking his fishing net off the table and walking out the door. But something spectacular happens. The camera zooms in for a close up of Alma, who sits expressionless at the table. The moment stays totally static until we cut to the next scene. To allow us the opportunity to see how Alma really feels about this would be an easy out. Instead her indifference is haunting. She knows she is with him, but can't have him because what he truly wants is not her.
In fact the entire film is made up of moments like that; moments that are spectacular in how mundanely they occur. The camera ominously looming over vast, empty, beautiful landscapes with the patience of a documentary eye; waiting for something to happen as opposed to probing to find it.
As I was waiting for the bus one day I couldn't help but overhear some girls conclude that Brokeback Mountain was good but slow and lagging. Yet it is one of Lee's truly great gifts to the cinema that he understands the pivotal rule of any great filmmaker: that form must mimic content. Any filmmaker can decorate a frame; it takes a true talent to provide the scene with exactly what the story requires of it. Because of this, time and time again Lee is able to deliver films with exactly what they need, no more and no less. Brokeback Mountain is so successful in part that the gears of its machine turn so smoothly that we barely even notice that they are working at all.
It is of course true that some films can fly by at a mere 80 minutes and deliver everything required, but a film like Brokeback needs at least two hours to reach maximum impact. There is no reason to rush a story that needs time to form out of genuine human emotion. The difference between this film and a boring one is that a boring film would take shape from the opening frame and remain static for the rest of the running time. Brokeback, on the other hand, starts static and grows, discovering beauty and pain in seemingly ordinary spaces.
The story, as many have probably heard is about two sheep ranchers in 1963 who go up to Brokeback Mountain for a summer job; Ennis to make money to create a life with his fiancé Alma, Jack because he is an out of work rodeo clown. On the mountain, one watches over the sheep, while the other mans the camp. But one night, after excessive amounts if drinking the two sacrifice the heard for a night in which they end up making abrupt, passionate love. The film chronicles their lives over the years as they cope with poverty, raising children and trying to keep their affair hidden from their families and communities.
Brokeback Mountain is as beautiful a love story as any ever told. It's that rare kind of film where a character, after making love to another man can say "I ain't no queer." And we believe him, for true love exists outside of certain variables such as age, class, gender, etc. What is beautiful about the love story is that it is always kept on the level of reality. It doesn't veer off into melodrama for sweeping emotional climaxes; it instead finds emotion in the seemingly nothingness of silence and pain. What makes the film even more remarkable is that at the same time it also functions as a tragedy. Firstly, it does not simply dismiss the female characters. It deals with the pain that the situation of their husbands has afforded them, and secondly it lets reality complicate the love story into tragedy. This is achieved as we see the divide between the free spirited Jack who wants nothing but to run away with Ennis and be happy for the rest of their lives, and the logical Ennis, who knows that the word of a gay love affair going around town could put their lives at risk. The narrative works remarkably as the more real the situation becomes the more tragic it begins to feel.
What has been achieved here is a brilliant combination of sparse poetic direction with acting that never seems to step wrong, especially for both Ledger and Williams whose performances are mostly internal. The cue of great acting is not in ones ability to express, but to repress. There is just as much meaning to be had from what is never said as there is in what is spoken aloud. And if the film is great for no better reason than one, it is because with every love story, be it straight or gay, public or secret, it knows that sometimes you simply have to sacrifice the heard in order to do what's right for the self, or you might end up regretting it for the rest of your life.