This morning I recorded Brokeback mountain off of Showtime. I watched it before when it first came out in the theaters and I really enjoyed it. For that reason, I decided to rewatch it and write this review (Side story, I really did not want to be seen in the theater watching this, but I got over it and manned up). It stars one of my favorite up-and-coming actors who had an untimely death, Heath Ledger. It also stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, and Ann Hathaway. The two male leads both get a job on brokeback mountain watching and tending to sheep, a 24 hour a day gig.
I have to jump straight to spoilers… The thing that bothered me the first time I watched this film was I had to suspend my disbelief was that these two guys Heath and Jake, just don’t look the slightest bit gay, and you have no indication of the possibility of them being homosexual. Not only that, you have no indication of them having any romantic feelings for each other up until the moment they share the “tent” together. This reminds me of this story. My father-in-law was watching this film up until ‘that’ scene when he basically jumped out of his seat to turn the TV off and was like what the “H” am I watching, but I digress. The fact that there was only one tent should have been an indication.
The film does quite a bit of character development in the beginning. For me, the scenes where they are kissing / making out are both hard to watch and hard to believe. I am not sure if that’s the actor’s fault, the director’s fault, or my fault, but the intimacy of their relationship was not believable.
The film had a nice setting within the mountains and also had a nice soundtrack. Once you got past the disbelief, the film continues to build on their relationship and spans a period of over 20 years until the point at which Jake’s character passes away. Leading up to this event and the story moments that follow you realize this is a morose film, kind of sad biopic of someone’s gay life. Again, once you get past the tent scene and the make-out sessions, this film strongly grabs your attention. You want to know what it’s going to happen to these people. It was well directed, well-acted and I would definitely recommend the film and give it five stars.
*****
