It is a beautiful, poignant film, with Lee managing to bring a gay love story to mainstream cinema, yet never erasing its queerness to appeal to a mainstream crowd.
Lee’s film does such a wonderful job at showing how it’s not just these men’s lives that are affected their wives too are also driven to live lives of half truths, to be with men who can never fully commit to them. The two go on to marry other women, forced to suppress their own desires and move on with their lives because society would not be able to accept them as they are. The film follows a 20 year affair between rodeo cowboy Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and ranch hand Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger), an affair that started one night on Brokeback Mountain. He does the same here with Brokeback Mountain.
Is there a more versatile director than Ang Lee? From period films like Sense and Sensibility, to offering his own spin on the martial arts film in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Ang Lee has been able to dive into any genre with ease – his focus as always is on telling a good story. Brokeback Mountain (2005) Brokeback Mountain
