Brokeback Mountain, finally: caution, some spoilers
Friday night I took a car load of girls over the border to Vancouver, and we saw Brokeback Mountain at The Park theater.
It's hard to know what to say about a movie like this. The photography was stunning, which is something that always mezmerizes me to the point that I forget to pay attention to the story. I remember feeling the same way when I saw Days of Heaven on its first day of release in 1978.
But okay. The thing that stays with me most is a strong sense of sadness. The story is tragic in the sense that pretty much everybody's life is ruined by the main character's flaw. Heath Ledger portrays Ennis as a man so frightened of his own needs that he sacrifices everything in the name of responsibility -- including the happiness of the people he's responsible for, and himself.
I haven't seen Heath Ledger in much else, and what I have seen didn't much impress me, but this performance was letter perfect. He gives you an Ennis who lives buried within himself, unable to reach out and take what he wants. Unable to break out of the path that's been laid out for him. We see that he is capable of openness and emotional connection only in two situations: with Jack Twist, and with his daughters, who he loves simply and absolutely. Heath Ledger captured the man with such clarity that I doubt I'll ever be able to look at him again without thinking of Ennis.
Or maybe not. Because I did see a brief interview with him last week, in black leather, slouched in a chair, hiding behind sunglasses, mumbling. A stoner, as my daughter would call him. But inside the stoner, an actor.
The other performances were excellent across the board. Jake Gyllenhall as the man more self aware, more open about his emotions and needs, less able to sublimate into work. The joyous one, who draws Ennis out of his huddle, and grows more desperate every year when they part after their few days together. The women, whose lives are stunted for reasons they don't realize or fully understand, who funnel their anger into the few channels available to them.
This is not a movie to see if you're feeling low. The final scenes are so poignant that it felt almost wrong to watch them. Ennis hears of Jack's death after the fact, and goes to visit his parents, desperate for some kind of connection. In Jack's old room he finds two shirts hanging on the same hanger -- one his, one Jack's, from the first summer they spent together. Everything about that moment, from Ennis's posture to the way his hands hold the shirt, speaks of unbearable loss.
So yes, this is a movie that is beautifully made, the story told with precision and insight and gentleness. Movie making at its best.