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Brokeback MountainFebruary 19, 2006 Like I've said before, I don't get out much so when I went to see Brokeback Mountain Thursday night all I knew was that it was about "gay cowboys" and that it was mostly shot in Alberta. Alberta's been on my psychic map since I was a New England horsekid and heard about the Calgary Stampede: it sounded more exciting than your average 4-H fair. A few years later I heard Ian and Sylvia's recording of Ian's "Four Strong Winds" -- "Think I'll go out to Alberta, weather's good there in the fall, got some friends that I can go to working for . . ." -- which has been on the soundtrack of my life ever since. (It would have fit right in on the Brokeback soundtrack too, come to think of it.) James Keelaghan grew up in Calgary, which speaks well for the place, plus he often sings about the Canadian prairie and about guys with no fixed address, but I was well into my forties when I first heard him on the radio, and in that particular song he was singing about Montana -- "Cold Missouri Waters," of course. The short version is that I really liked the movie, but my impressions are still settling and coalescing and I'm still not sure what I think about it. I was seriously impressed by the performances of the two principals, Jake Gyllenhall as Jack Twist and Heath Ledger as Ennis del Mar. Ledger in particular blew me away, because Ennis is more than laconic: Ennis buries thoughts way back in his head before they can slip into consciousness and start shaping, and being shaped by, words. Using body and face and the few words he does speak, Ledger manages to convey the changes that are happening slowly but inexorably under the surface. The supporting cast was solid but the actors didn't have much to work with. Most of the secondary characters existed to deliver a line or provide a point of view: disapproving boss, hoodwinked wives, neglected but charming daughters, neglected and bratty son, perplexed girlfriend, defeated parents . . . Ennis finds his long-lost shirt and jacket in the closet of Jack's boyhood room. Jack's mother seems to have understood the situation. One wonders: Did the senior Twists ever visit Jack's family in Texas? Did Jack's wife and son ever see the desolate homestead of Jack's parents? Jack's mother doesn't even have a name. Most of the film's human habitations are dreary, run-down places. life has rolled on and left a few shacks and fence posts behind. There's more money in Texas, but life there doesn't look so good either. Racing barrels, Lureen is compellingly alive. When real life -- marriage to Jack, motherhood, crunching numbers for her father's business-- catches up with her, she dwindles, becoming progressively more plastic and less vibrant. Real life is what happens up in the mountains, which are undeniably majestic and probably responsible for most of the raving about Brokeback's cinematography. Jack and Ennis's relationship happens primarily up in the mountains. Reveries of paradise lost, however, are spiked by a bear, a gutted sheep carcass, and the ranch foreman, who appears unannounced like -- well, now that you mention it, like a snake. He isn't tempting anyone to do anything; he doesn't have to -- we pack our temptations in with us. The diet isn't exactly paradisical either: it's heavy on canned beans. The herders' life in the mountains does suggest camping out, however, and that this is a place where the demands of "real" life might not apply. Some moviegoers have complained that Brokeback Mountain is just another love story, that it's not really about being gay. Well, no, it's not: it's about two men who love each other in a society that has no name and no prescribed course for such love. Gay love isn't the only "love that dares not speak its name" (or hasn't a name to speak): Brokeback Mountain writes two men's love for each other into a tradition that includes extramarital love, interracial love, cross-class love, and, well, Romeo and Juliet. Ennis and Jack have no words to describe what they feel for each other, and no script to follow in making a life together. They, unlike your basic he-and-she couple, have to make it up from scratch. It's the difference between driving the interstates from Boston to Chicago and bushwhacking every step of the way. No surprise it's tragic and poignant and not giddily uplifting. But near the end Ennis's daughter comes to tell him she's getting married, and to ask him to come to the wedding. Ennis hems and haws and makes excuses, but then he asks: "Does he love you?" Not "Do you love him?," the usual canned question for such occasions. Ennis knows what he had, and what he's lost. He's changed in a deep-down serious way.
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