BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
A devastating exploration of love, intimacy, and the forces that keep it just out of reach
Directed By: Ang Lee
Other Notable Films From Ang Lee: Life of Pi, Sense and Sensibility, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Starring: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway, Michelle Williams, Randy Quaid
Screenplay By: Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana (based on the short story by Annie Proulx)
Movie Synopsis: Two cowboys have a secret love affair in 1960s Wyoming
Signature Line: “I wish I knew how to quit you.”
THE INTRODUCTION
An accounting of time, and people, and context
A little over an hour into Brokeback Mountain, a movie about two cowboys who fall in love in 1960s Wyoming, an important conversation takes place during a much-awaited reunion between the two men. The way it goes is:
Ennis Del Mar (played by Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (played Jake Gyllenhaal) are on a camping trip after having not seen each other for four years. The moon is lighting up the night sky, a river nearby is providing some ambient noise, the fire they’ve built is warming the air around them, and it’s all just impossibly beautiful. As they bask in the moment, Jack tells Ennis that things could be like that forever—Ennis just needs to decide he wants it.
Ennis responds by telling Jack a story from his childhood about how two gay men tried to make life for themselves in the small town where he was raised and it ended with one of them getting beaten to death with a tire iron. He says he and Jack can see each other every once in a while, way out in the wilderness, but that’s it. When Jack balks at the idea of only being with Ennis every couple years, Ennis tries to console him by saying, “If you can’t fix it, Jack, you gotta stand it.”
It’s a heartbreaking statement. There’s an agony in it, and palpable devastation in Ennis’s voice. He loves Jack desperately, and would be with him if he felt like he could, but a haunting cruelty in his world—one that Ennis believes to be as inevitable as the river the two men are camping next to—prevents him from believing Jack’s suggestion could ever be anything more than a fantasy.
One of the videos I watched while researching for this essay was a really great breakdown of the movie by pop culture critic Matt Baume. Baume, who is gay, talked about how when Brokeback came out two decades ago, a part of him wanted it to fail because he didn’t want a spotlight on gay men because he believed at the time that the quieter someone was about being gay, the safer they were. He explained that as he grew older, though, that opinion changed. And he brought the video toward its close by referencing the above-mentioned Ennis line.
“Now, Ennis wasn’t wrong about the danger he and Jack were in, and neither was I,” Baume says. “Whether it was the murder of Matthew Shepard,1 the Pulse massacre,2 or the countless queer people whose lives are taken without ever being reported, there really are people who mean us harm. But what Ennis was wrong about, is this: If you can’t stand it, you have to fix it. What other option is there?”
Brokeback Mountain eventually made over $179 million at the box office (that’s over $300 million in today’s money), tidal wave’d its way through its awards season (pulling in eight Oscar nominations and three Oscar wins, among many other nods), and landed a much-earned spot on every Best of the Year/Decade/Century list of consequence since.
Its ultimate legacy, though, is what it has made people feel: Brokeback Mountain is both a triumph of understated beauty and, like Baume's words, a powerful argument for the singular importance of love in all our lives.
THE VIEWING
A timestamped rewatch of Brokeback Mountain
3:48: Heath Ledger is here. He plays Ennis Del Mar, a very restrained, very reserved, clenched-fist cowboy who struggles to express his emotions. I watched a bunch of Heath Ledger interviews from the Brokeback Mountain press run to find moments of him discussing how he was able to turn Ennis—who is one of the 25 most compelling movie characters of the century—into such an unforgettable creation. The best one I found happened during a scrum where Ledger explained that his aim was to physicalize Ennis’s inner turmoil, saying “I wanted any form of expression to just… you know… be painful for him.” I love that as an operating principle for Ennis, and I love rewatching Ledger’s performance with that in mind.
4:07: Jake Gyllenhaal is here. He plays Jack Twist (what a name), a very charismatic, very engaging, much more comfortable-with-himself cowboy. Gyllenhaal is one of my favorite actors ever, and this is one of his best performances ever, and so I think I’m probably gonna be mad for the rest of my life that he somehow lost the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor here to George Clooney in fucking Syriana. What a disaster.3
5:17: Randy Quaid is here. He plays Joe Aguirre, a rancher who needs 500 or so of his sheep herded across Brokeback Mountain over the summer. That’s what he’s hiring Ennis and Jack to do. Little does he know, he’s about to accidentally kick off one of the most poignant, beautiful romances of all-time. Joe Aguirre doesn’t look exactly how I’d imagine a cupid to look, but he’s a cupid nonetheless.
5:18: P.S. If I had to pick what exactly Joe Aguirre does look like, I’d go with “someone who says stuff like ‘You boys ain’t from around here, huh?’ to strangers who stop in at a diner while passing through a small Texas town.”
8:25: What’s the creepiest animal in a movie? Like, on average, I mean. I think my pick would be a goat. They just always seem like… I don’t know… maybe I’m a sucker who’s fallen for anti-goat propaganda spread by the sheep community, but I’ve always associated goats with the devil and the occult, you know what I mean?
11:12: I know that they filmed Brokeback Mountain in Canada (for Wyoming) and New Mexico (for Texas), but let me use this wide show of Pretend Wyoming to say: This would be a very easy place to fall in love. It’s beautiful. Seeing shots like this always makes me feel a lot like I need to spend more time in nature.
12:45: Being a cowboy seems fucking hard. And, generally speaking, I do not for one single second think that I would be any good at it. That being said, there is one part of being a cowboy that I would CRUSH at: In every cowboy movie, there’s always a scene where some guys are sitting around a fire eating beans. They fucking love beans. And I do, too. I eat beans six or seven times a week in my regular life. Were I a cowboy, I would lead the National Cowboy League in bean eating. I would put up impossible-to-match bean-eating numbers. I’m talking about LeBron James-level bean numbers. They would pass stories celebrating my bean-eating prowess down through generations. Of that, I am certain.
15:35: Two things to mention about this moment where Ennis comes across a bear while guiding a couple of transport mules through the mountains:
I think this is the first movie we’ve had at GOOD MOVIE that’s had a bear in it. Apologies to the bear community for the lack of bear-related content. We’re about to hit all sorts of bear movies to make up for the oversight: The Edge, The Revenant, Paddington Bear, The Great Outdoors, etc. Get ready for a bear-centered theme month soon, everybody. (Decembear, perhaps?)
Per the official cast list for Brokeback Mountain on IMDb, this bear’s name in real life was “Bonkers.” He was in a bunch of stuff during his acting days. His most impressive non-Brokeback credits: He had a three-episode arc on The Sopranos (this is not a joke), and he played the adult version of Winnie the Pooh in 2004’s A Bear Named Winnie. Shoutout my boy Bonkers. What a life you lived, friend.
20:31: Having this entire moment where Ennis gives himself a cowboy bath behind Jack play out (a) in complete silence; and (b) without Jack ever glancing back at Ennis or Ennis glancing up at Jack… man, it’s just so fucking good. Gyllenhaal and Ledger and Ang Lee made so many wonderful creative decisions in this movie.
20:32: P.S. This movie inspired endless conversations and thinkpieces immediately upon its release, and it’s continued to do so in the years since. One thing nobody ever talks about, though: My boy Ennis was cowboying around in a pair of jeans without any underwear on and NEVER ONCE got any sort of rash or tenderness on him. What an accomplishment. As far as achievements go, that’s up there with America putting a man on the moon and Russell Westbrook averaging a triple-double in four separate seasons.
Let’s go ahead and do this scene for this week’s FOOTNOTES video:
