'Brokeback Mountain' leaves viewers with echo of heartache

By Bruce Bulloch

The heart wants what the heart wants. How often has that line been tossed off as a casual nod to the mysteries of love? After viewing Ang Lee's Oscar winning movie "Brokeback Mountain," however, it may read more like the stuff of Greek oracle - a warning that love, like fate, has little use for mercy.

"Brokeback Mountain" has received a lot of notoriety because of its subject, a gay love affair between two young cowboys beginning in the 1960's, but it's the way this story is told, as an unflinching look at the forces unleashed by both desire and its denial, that is the real reason to see this movie.

Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) first meet outside the wind-blown office of a sheep ranching operation in Wyoming, each hoping to land a job. They don't speak they just eye each other warily. These are men who, for cultural and individual reasons, keep their personal lives to themselves. In one telling scene the two, now co-workers, head off to a bar to share a beer. But they don't walk side by side, instead they each walk alone, several paces apart.

Once in the rugged high country of Brokeback Mountain they find a sanctuary that allows them let their guard down and develop a level of friendship that finds its way into passion. But Brokeback is a temporary reprieve from the strict bounds of their community and their own expectations of themselves as men. Once off the mountain they go their separate ways to marry and have children, attempting to create a life that will redeem them.

Heath Ledger owns the center of this movie. His Ennis keeps his emotions strangled deep in his throat fearing the damage that would be unleashed if he let down his guard-and the great heartbreak of this story is that he's right.

Eventually the two cross paths again. Their affair resumes and their lives begin to unravel.

One of the surprises of "Brokeback Mountain" is that a movie about male homosexual love could have so many strong performances by women, notably Michelle Williams' Alma, wife of Ennis and collateral damage of his attempt to deny his homosexuality and force his life down an acceptable path. The few scenes that follow Alma's discovery of Ennis' passion for Jack are a quiet study in a life shattered. It takes all of five minutes for Williams to earn her Oscar nomination.

And Williams isn't the only exceptional actress in the movie. Kate Mara plays Alma Jr., who hungers for more connection with her father than he seems capable of giving anyone. But Alma Jr. is her father's daughter and exhibits the same yearning tamped down hard under a stoic passivity for what little life gives her. There is a palpable sense of family between Mara and Ledger.

While "Brokeback Mountain" may be on the cutting edge of subject matter it still reads like a classic western: A spare, hard story with little hysteria or melodrama. What is remarkable about this movie is that every piece fits; there are no extraneous elements and virtually no missed beats. Ang Lee has worked in several film genres during his career and he has a gift for finding the essential voice of each.

Jack can't keep his desires as tightly capped as Ennis does and eventually he is discovered and murdered and Ennis is left to confront a life that has left him utterly alone. The final shot of the movie is an exquisitely wrenching moment. Ennis holds Jack's shirt while through a window a green field of corn can be seen-a tantalizing glimpse of life just out of reach.

Many good movies fail at greatness because they slur the ending, unable to identify the precise moment when the story is truly over. "Brokeback Mountain" ends on exactly the right note, leaving the viewer with a reverberating echo of heartache.

Bruce Bulloch can be reached at wseditor@robinsonnews.com