A short story that should have been treated as a short film.

Let’s not look at BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN as the “gay cowboy” movie or as “the film that should have won the Best Picture Oscar.” Let’s avoid the clichés that cinema as an art form reflects the political nature of society and let’s definitely not tiptoe around the assumedly politically-correct stance that the homosexual community needs to rally around this film and treat it as a benchmark. Instead, let’s look at BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN as a film, something many reviewers (and fans) refuse to do.

From its opening scene of a lonely pre-dawn road through the entire first act filled with Canadian majesty masquerading as the purple mountains of Wyoming, film auteur Ang Lee tries his best to illustrate the solitary life that a sheep-herder must certainly face. This solidarity continues its theme as Ennis and Jack learn that they are a definite minority and how their lifestyle affects other choices they must deal with.

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN possess a number of fine and memorable scenes, most of which occur in the following two acts where Ennis and Jack, apart from each other, do their best to simply live life. Lee’s base camerawork coupled with beautifully-authentic looking sets helps capture these cinematic moments. Where BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN fails is its inability to place these individual moments into a cohesive and compelling film. Lee fails in glancing over this solitary cowboy life by providing nothing more than the quickest of glimpses. As a result, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN as a whole appears as nothing more than filler material padding a short story.

The silent moments in a cowboy’s life is a topic that has been illustrated in more compelling films than this. Kevin Costner’s OPEN RANGE is perhaps the most current example. A handful of good scenes does not make a complete narrative and Ang Lee and James Schamus have partnered on better collaborations than this.

Heath Ledger’s Ennis is a one-dimensional rough and stoic cowboy of old whose press has surprisingly outshone that of Jake Gyllenhaal’s work, whose character – and acting – is definitely the superior of the two.

Not to slight Annie Proulx’s magazine story, it appeared that Lee and Oscar-winning writing team of McMurty and Ossana failed to forget the basic premise of adapting a single short story into a full-length feature. Great scenes become highly memorable but without a cohesive story combing such scenes into a greater sum results in an unimpressive product.

As Always,
theJOE