Brokeback Mountain, A Contrarian Review

Two lusty young cowpokes hire on to watch some purty sheep in a beautiful mountain setting. They eat a lot of beans. They shoot stuff. Then one cold night they end up spooning in the tent. A fever comes over them and there is fornication rodeo style—that is, it resembles bull riding. The summer ends and the fellows split without much discussion about their relationship. Jack Twist is more open but his running mate Ennis is taciturn as they part. In the following scene, though, Ennis has some kind of separation fit which involves shaking and the dry heaves. (This particular scene earned an Oscar nomination). Cowpokes, you see, express themselves through bareback wraslin’ in the meadow but apparently can’t discuss what they are getting themselves into.  After summer on Brokeback, both fellows get married to gorgeous gals, engage in hetro sex and have kids. But there is a powerful yearning here that turns the story into a kind of cowboy “Same Time Next Year.” After four years have passed the guys make contact and embark on annual, or more often fishing trips, where no fishing takes place. I have great admiration for Brokeback Mountain’s screenwriter, Larry McMurtry (who wrote Lonesome Dove) but the film, which has been hyped to the max as the “gay cowboy film,” could use a bit of Neil Simon. It is ponderously dour. There is no joy in Jack and Ennis’s relationship. No motivation that I could discern, save lust, for it coming into existence. There is only beautiful scenery and a fierce thunderstorm to spark their love. The James Dobsons of the world certainly don’t have to worry about Brokeback Mountain as an advertisement for the gay lifestyle. Man on man sex in a tent after a supper of canned beans really doesn’t seem that attractive. Director Ang Lee explores the aftermath of that fateful summer as each man lives a conflicted life. Jack urges Ennis to go ranching with him. But Ennis was traumatized in his youth by a hate crime against an old cowboy who cohabited with another old poke and can’t bring himself to break away. Ennis’s wife is wise to Jack “Nasty” though she never mentions it until way after the divorce. Ennis has a relationship with a good looking waitress who, for reasons unexplained, falls in love with him. In a moving scene she cries while he eats pie, apparently unmoved by her pain. Jack, feeling lonely without Ennis to help him with his unspeakable urges travels to Juarez then uses his gaydar to ferret out the equally unspeakable urges of a big ole ranch foreman. (It appears that man love is more of an epidemic in ranch country than any of us suspected). Ennis’s worst fears are realized. He ends up living in a crappy mobile home. No, that’s not it. He learns that Jack has died. While Jack’s widow describes his death caused by an exploding tire we see a grainy flashback of Jack being beaten to death by cowboys. Ennis visits Jack’s parents, learns that Jack had cheated on him with the foreman and finds, hidden in Jack’s boyhood bedroom which his mom kept just the way he’d left it, their two shirts from Brokeback Mountain still stained with blood from a short fisticuff they’d had that wondrous summer. The shirts are hung symbolically on the same hanger.
Perhaps I knew too much about what happened on the mountain before I saw this film. But I have to wonder what the shouting is all about. It may have been too subtle and deep for me. However, I think Jack and Ennis could have saved us all two hours if they had just moved to any large coastal city and lived happily ever after.