Brokeback Mountain

When describing Brokeback Mountain, the new controversial romantic drama by acclaimed director Ang Lee, many critics like to use words like "haunting", "beautiful", "lyrical", "poetic", and "memorable". I'd like to add a few more words to that list. Namely, "tedious", "monotonous", "repetitive", "padded", and most of all "overrated". While it's true that no movie could possibly live up to the amount of hype and praise that this film has generated over the past few months, Brokeback Mountain fails to surpass even the most lowered of expectations. Yes, the film is beautifully shot, and has a couple good performances to its credit, but the film's central love story struck no chord with me. It certainly doesn't help that Ang Lee has given his story an overly leisurely and lethargic tone that makes the 2 hour and 15 minute running time seem to stretch on for 5 hours. Strip away the controversial love story angle and the hype, and you're left with your standard forbidden love affair movie that wouldn't get half as much attention if it weren't for the fact that the two lovers just happen to be men.

The film chronicles a 20-year relationship between two young sheep herders (yes, they're "gay sheep herders", not "gay cowboys" as everyone else calls them) that meet initially in 1963. Ennis (Heath Ledger) is the strong silent type, while Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the more wild, rowdy type. They've been hired to tend sheep on Wyoming's Brokeback Mountain as the film opens. Spending their days alone together in the mountains with the sheep and the dogs, the two men strike up a bond that eventually turns physical as time goes on. When their job ends, they must return to their normal lives. Ennis marries his fiance, Alma (Michelle Williams), while Jack catches the eye of a beautiful rodeo queen named Lureen (Anne Hathaway) who is the heir to a big business in Texas. However, the two men never forget their time on Brokeback, and make periodic meetings every couple years to take "fishing trips" together. Ennis' wife discovers the truth about their relationship early on, but must hold back her feelings for the good of their growing family and children.

The rest of the film deals with the hardships the men find leading their double lives, and the effect their relationship has on those close to them. Jack is the dreamer, wanting to run away with Ennis and start a life on a ranch somewhere. Ennis, on the other hand, is more pessimistic. He knows their relationship could never be out in the open, as he's seen first hand what can happen to those who live outside of society's expectations. (When he was a child, he saw the body of a gay man who had been murdered in a Matthew Shepherd-style killing.) Tensions supposedly flare on all sides, but I couldn't tell, because the film's central characters are so dull, and the film seems to be more interested in padding its running time with seemingly-endless nature shots that drag on too long.

Though its premise is ripe for high drama, Brokeback Mountain fails because the movie is emotionally distant for the most part. Ennis and Jack are not interesting people, nor do they possess any real spark during their scenes together, so I never once believed their forbidden relationship. Both of the men lack any real character to their personalities. Just because Ennis is the strong and silent type doesn't mean he has to be completely dry and mumble most of his words to the point that you sometimes can't understand what he's saying. But that's exactly how Heath Ledger plays him. All of Ennis' scenes basically revolve around a few basic emotions - silent and steely, angry and bitter, violent and drunk, or passionate and lustful whenever he's around Jack. He keeps on repeating these same motions over and over throughout the entire movie, so you pretty much see everything the character has to offer before the film's hit the 45-minute mark, and we've still got an hour and a half left to go in the movie by that time. Jack, while being the more interesting of the two (he actually tries to show some form of complex emotion), also fails to grab our attention because the movie doesn't bother to develop him enough. He pops up every now and then, runs off with Ennis for a "fishing trip", pouts about how they can't be together all the time, then goes back to his wife at home. The movie keeps on repeating the same motions over and over again almost like clockwork. By hitting the same emotional notes over and over, Brokeback Mountain quickly becomes a repetitive experience.

The film is also sloppily edited. Not only does director Ang Lee seem to linger a bit too long on nature shots and scenes where absolutely nothing happens, but the scenes seem to have no coherent flow or reason. The movie often jumps from one scene to the next with no warning. Sometimes it even feels like a scene isn't over yet, but it moves onto the next scene anyway. A very good example is a scene where Ennis is walking to a bar in a bad mood after having an argument with his wife. He almost gets hit by a truck as he crosses the street. The driver of the truck yells at him, Ennis gets mad, and forces the driver out of the truck. A violent fistfight erupts between the two men, but the movie doesn't even bother to finish the scene. We see the two men fighting, and suddenly, the film jumps to a completely different scene without any warning. There is also a pointless scene where Ennis picks a fight with a couple of drunk bikers at a Fourth of July celebration. The movie keeps on adding scenes that have little to do with anything, so we wonder what the point is in the first place. There were many times when I thought the movie could be developing its characters further (especially some of the more underwritten ones like Jack's wife, Lureen), but instead, we get scenes where we get to see Heath Ledger leaning against a wall and smoking for about a minute and a half.

Another problem is that the movie does not do a successful job at expressing how much time is supposed to have passed. We can mostly tell by the dialogue (someone will say what year it is), or by the growth of Ennis' two daughters. Surprisingly Ennis and Jack seem to change very little in the 20 or so years that the film covers. Ennis looks pretty much the same in the early 80s then he did in 1963 when the film begins. As for Jack, the filmmakers gray his hair a little, and add a very distracting mustache to his face that, as one other critic pointed out, kind of makes him look like one of the Village People. Thanks to the sloppy editing, the film seems to jump around from year to year with little clue to the audience as to just exactly how much time is supposed to have passed.

That's not to say the film's all bad. Even though I think the movie lingers a bit too long on the shots, the nature cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto is certainly beautiful. And although the lead performances are a mixed bag (Heath Ledger's decision to mumble most of his dialogue is a grave miscalculation), there is one very strong performance that stands out in the film, and that belongs to Michelle Williams who plays Ennis' tortured wife, Alma. She is sympathetic and powerful in her performance, particularly in a scene where she confronts her husband about his "fishing trips". This 3 minute scene holds more emotion and power than the entire rest of the film's running time, and is one of the few scenes that actually hint at a much better and more interesting movie. Her recent Academy Award nomination is well deserved, and is one of the few nominations this film received that I actually agree with.

Brokeback Mountain, much like other failed Oscar bait dramas this past year like Syriana and Memoirs of a Geisha, is an Emperor without any clothes. It's so meandering and repetitive that I almost have to wonder how anyone can praise it to the skies the way many have. The movie attempts nothing new at its core, it's simply an old story of forbidden love given a new coat of paint by having the two lovers be men. That's not enough for me. The movie doesn't dig deep enough and it doesn't hit hard enough. It is emotionally cold and distant when it should be warm and passionate. It is dull and pointless when it should be engaging and heartbreaking. I admire what the film tried to do, but it just failed to grab my attention. I'm sure many of you reading will disagree with me, so be it. I couldn't call this site "Reel Opinions" if I wasn't honest. To those of you who lavish this movie with praise, I ask if you would do so if the couple at the core of the story were a man and a woman. It's unique angle is all this film has going for it. Brokeback Mountain is nothing more than a gimmick disguised as high art.

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