'Brokeback Mountain' hits stores
(May, 10, 2006)
By: Chris Nashawaty (Entertainment Weekly)
With Jay Leno's gay-cowboy gags safely behind us, it's finally possible to take a clear look at one of last year's most controversial movies.
“Brokeback Mountain” is touching, heartbreaking and beautiful to look at. And after watching it again on DVD, I think it's funny how the most controversial thing about the film is how uncontroversial it is.
“Brokeback Mountain” is a love story -- period. It just so happens to be about two rough-and-tumble cowpokes instead of a guy and a girl. Big deal.
Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal play a pair of wranglers who meet in the lush mountains of Wyoming when they’re both hired to look after a flock of sheep.
Over cold, campfire nights, they open up to each other and become friends. Then, on one very cold night, they become more than friends.
There had been a lot of ink anointing Ledger and Gyllenhaal as the next big things in Hollywood. But until this film, there was little on their resumes to back up the hype.
Ledger is remarkable as his character Ennis Del Mar -- the quieter, more haunted of the two -- fights his feelings for Gyllenhaal's Jack Twist.
When their season on Brokeback comes to an end, the two go their separate ways and eventually marry. But every once in a while, they rekindle their relationship on so-called fishing trips.
By the end of the film, when both Ennis and Jack are middle-aged men and they realize that they let their one chance at happiness slip through their fingers, “Brokeback Mountain” becomes something more than just a “gay-cowboy movie.” It becomes the best Hollywood love story in a long, long time.