Tough guys don't dance

Brokeback Mountain is a brilliant interpretation of love

Sonali Ghose Sen

Real men in Hollywood wear Stetsons. Real men ride horses. Real men bond over whisky around a campfire. Real men in Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain do all this, but they also do something one never sees a denim-clad cowboy doing. They fall in love. With each other. And that's what makes Brokeback Mountain so wonderfully different from any other Oscar contender this March.

Taciturn ranch hand Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) meet in 1963 outside ranch boss Joe Aguirre's (Randy Quaid) office. The opening sequence of Ennis and Jack waiting for the ranch boss without saying a single word sets the tone for the movie. This is how their story will unfold for the next 20 years. At first, they'll deny introduction, then attraction and then love. As Ang Lee put it in an interview "they don't have vocabulary, those characters at that time, to understand what they experience. It is very private. How their body and emotions play out psychologically, you establish that, that is very important." In the shadow of the majestic Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee does that with poetic skill and compassionate grace.

Passion is born out of camaraderie as rodeo rider Jack pulls Ennis out from his uncommunicative mode into swapping stories about the rodeo, talking about his childhood and finally on a drunken, cold winter's night  into his bedroll. The coupling is rough and without finesse, yet Ang Lee's controlled direction makes it feel more sensual than sexual.  There is innocence to their relationship, in the bonding through that idyllic summer, even in the futility in denying it:Ennis-"I ain't no queer"
Jack-"me neither."

This summer romance will survive two marriages, children and the distance between Texas and Wyoming. It will also survive Ennis's refusal to bring the relationship out in the open, to admit to it, sometimes even to himself, as is brilliantly portrayed in the scene where he breaks down after Jack Twist's truck rattles off in the distance. As he retches, cries, bangs his head against wall, the audience palpably feel the desperation of true love.

Heath Ledger as Ennis Del Mar makes the character his own. The strong, silent, repressed Ennis moves through life with a controlled, economy of movement. He travels light (his belongings literally fit a small bag) and seemingly without attachment, doing his duty — by his wife, his job, his children. This seemingly detached façade however hides a passion that sometimes borders on the violent and when he loves, he does it truly, deeply, faithfully. The handsome, playful Jack Twist is the perfect foil to intense Ennis. He is more comfortable with his sexuality, more vocal about their relationship, yet more reckless about loving. It is his recklessness that will lead to tragedy — or is it something that Ennis imagines? That is open to interpretation in the movie.

Open to interpretation — that is the secret of Ang Lee's masterful direction. He lets the action, the visual, the silence speak for itself when words seem superfluous to the story. The look on Alma's face when she discovers her husband passionately kissing Jack, in the way he has never kissed her, is a study in sadness that no dialogue could have ever conveyed. Jack's wife Lureen's (Anne Hathaway) transition from gorgeous brunette to bleached, cynical blonde is also told visually.

However, that does not mean that the screenplay is in any way flawed. Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana unspool the story like a good country western song. It has love and longing, pain and separation, joy and tragedy in equal measure. The subplots are handled deftly and even the cameo roles leave an indelible impression. And Rodrigo Prieto's lyrical cinematography makes the controversial material seem completely natural.

 Though Ang Lee storms the bastion of real men with ease, those expecting to see a gay western will be disappointed. This is a groundbreaking movie not because a great American symbol of manhood is shown from a completely new perspective. Not because a Taiwanese born director interprets the American way of life so beautifully. This is a groundbreaking movie because it interprets love the way a great storyteller would. Even if love happens not over a glass of wine but after a bottle full of whisky. Even if love is declared in fishing trips and not trysts in the gardens. Even if love leaves its memento of sadness in a bloodstained shirt and not a withered rose.

Real men have arrived in Hollywood. And are here to stay.