Brokeback Mountain Review

I'll admit it - I waited a while to see Brokeback Mountain. There was so much talk about the gay sex scenes. I really don't care for gratuitous sex scenes that do nothing to elevate the plot in any movie. How stupid did I feel when I actually saw the movie? VERY.

It's a love story, and probably a little more sappy than I would like. As for the "big, gay, sex scenes?" Oh, please. Get a life. I think if this story had been about a heterosexual couple, I probably would have shut it off. The thing that made it interesting to me was the challenges and issues facing the two men at that time. Ennis (Heath Ledger) and Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) seem so different from one another, and under any circumstances, I would not put those two together.

Ennis is quiet, reserved, and level-headed. Jack is passionate, impulsive, and hot-headed. Both actors turned in great performances in this film. I know some people had a problem with Jack's death at the end of the film. I thought Ennis had foreshadowed it, when he talked of the violent deaths and dragging of the two men who had taken up residence with each other near his childhood home. Those two men just lived together. Jack was soliciting male prostitutes in Mexico and carrying on with another man in a not-so-subtle way in Texas. I saw the handwriting on the wall for Jack Twist pretty early on. My first guess was suicide, I was wrong about that.

Jack and Ennis were star-crossed. It was sad that society kept them apart. I do not personally know any gay people or couples, but that kind of persecution and stigma seemed authentic. Jack, who was fictional, was mercilessly beaten with a tire iron in the early 1970's. Matthew Shepard, who was a real person, was killed in a similarly violent fashion in 1998.

The scenery and cinematography in this film is nothing short of amazing. It's beautiful. It deserved all of the Oscars it won.

This is a love story, and I did not feel it was "pushing an agenda." I am glad I finally watched it.