Part of Queer Qlassics
In 1963 Wyoming, by chance shepherds Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) find themselves working together in a situation that foments all manner of emotional evolution. Isolated from the disapproving eye of society, the two define their own space for a little while, lovely while it lasts. But the way that those moments linger over 20 years cast their own kind of spell, with collisions no less fraught given how slowly they occur.
This tender, tense adaptation of the Annie Proulx short story won three Oscars (for director Ang Lee, screenwriters Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry, and composer Gustavo Santaolalla) and has also been staged as an opera and as a play with music. Even moreso, it has retained a cultural footprint two decades on that few films of the early aughts have.
“Confidently directed by Ang Lee and featuring sensitive and powerful performances by Jake Gyllenhaal and a breathtaking Heath Ledger, this film is determined to involve us in the naturalness and even inevitability of its epic, complicated love story.” —Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times “The world we live in today is still doing its damndest to twist the very definition of love out of our hands. This film is a slap in every one of their sanctimonious, ignorant faces.” —Jason Adams, My New Plaid Pants “A plainspoken, straightforward little masterpiece of heartbreak and regret.” —Sean Burns, Philadelphia Weekly “BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is that rare thing, a big Hollywood weeper with a beautiful ache at its center. It's a modern-age Western that turns into a quietly revolutionary love story.” —Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
