Brokeback Mountain

Ledger and Gyllenhaal deserve nothing but praise for their brave, sensitive portrayals of troubled souls...

What is remarkable about the film is how it doesn't politicise the homosexuality theme, transcends it to become the story of two people in doomed love. The two lead characters are wonderfully delineated.

Brokeback Mountain is in no rush. Its emotional impact builds slowly, its rhythms in tune with the countryside--the rugged grandeur of the mountains; the arid, bleak vistas of backwater Western towns.

Arguably Ang Lee's best film, this swooning, achingly sad near-masterpiece offers a universal love story that lingers long in the mind.

[A] powerful and moving film, a smart study of relationships that could but can't and never will be.

The approach is dry as the Wyoming landscape, and while it occasionally threatens to pull the film out of shape, it's still the right one for these men.

20 years on, Brokeback Mountain remains a milestone of queer cinema. There's an interesting discussion to be had about the casting of straight actors and the depiction of intimacy, but the film's score and tragic ending remain iconic

It remains a rarely-surpassed high-watermark for both Ledger and Gyllenhaal, who were both nominated (it remains Gyllenhaal’s only nod), and who each capture something in their characters and something in themselves as actors that seems a tad elusive.

Sure, there are happier gay films out now, ones that involve more queer talent both in front of and behind the camera, but here I am still, clinging onto this masterpiece like Ennis holding onto that damn jacket.

Above all, the performances of Jake Gyllenhall and Heath Ledger lift “Brokeback Mountain” above the ordinary study of male-male friendship and love—repressed, resisted, indulged, debated, and analyzed. It pays dividends in its haunting specificity.