"Brokeback Mountain"

“Brokeback Mountain,” writer Annie Proulx’s spare and bittersweet short story of two Wyoming cowboys, was first published in The New Yorker in 1997. “Brokeback began as an examination of country homophobia in the land of the great pure, noble cowboy,” writes Proulx on her Web site. The story begins in 1963 and chronicles a lifelong affair between Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, who meet and fall in love during a summer tending sheep on Brokeback Mountain.

Following her mother’s death in 1993 Proulx moved to Wyoming, where she spent considerable time “exploring the state’s history and terrain on the back roads” - a place, she notes, that moved her deeply. “I took Wyoming for my subject.” Proulx’s keen observations and rich imagination resulted in a collection of short stories, "Close Range," which was published in 1999. "Brokeback Mountain," included in the collection, is one of 11 stories that depicts characters who are struggling to define themselves against the backdrop of the Wyoming landscape. The title "Close Range" does not represent a close look at something, but the idea of the close(d) range, the open, unfenced place that no longer exists,” writes Proulx.

Tawainese director Ang Lee, along with screenwriters Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry, has translated Proulx’s richly drawn characters and haunting prose to the screen in a groundbreaking film starring Heath Ledger as Ennis and Jake Gyllenhaal as Jack. “Brokeback Mountain” eloquently tells the story of a fierce love and heartbreak amidst the constrained social mores of the time and the iconic symbols of the American West. The verdant valleys and snowcapped mountains provide sanctuary to Ennis and Jack’s forbidden love, which ignites on a bone-chilling night, and is consummated time and again during an idyllic summer in the high country. “It’s nobody’s business but ours,” says Jack. “You know it could be like this - just like this - always.” Ennis reveals his deep ambivalence as he recounts a grisly scene in which a man was murdered because of his sexual orientation. “There was these two old guys ranched together down home, Earl and Rich - Dad would pass a remark when he seen them...I was what, nine years old, and they found Earl dead in an irrigation ditch. They’d took a tire iron to him.”

Early snows force the men down from the mountain and back to their lives. In the ensuing years Ennis marries Alma (Michelle Williams) and fathers two daughters. Jack marries Lureen (Anne Hathaway), a rodeo queen, with whom he has a son, and works for Lureen’s father in the farm equipment business in Texas. Fours years go by before Ennis and Jack see one another again. What transpired between them on the mountain remains strong and clearly evident. The men embrace and then move towards the shadows of the building to kiss; smoldering passion, repressed for years, erupts into a rough dance as they press their sinewy bodies together. Alma watches the lovers from her window, her face a mix of disbelief and anguish.

Over the next two decades Ennis and Jack disguise their liaisons as fishing trips, and grapple with their illicit love. Their affair slowly erodes the foundations of the men’s lives that they have created away from the mountain, within the constraints of societal expectations. The widening gulf between Ennis and Alma gives way to divorce; Alma later marries the local grocer. Lureen takes over her father’s business and shows an aptitude for numbers. Over time her vivaciousness turns steely and distant. Jack’s eagerness for commitment and Ennis’ fear of bucking social conventions create an underlying thread of tension between the men despite their deep longing for one another. “If you can’t fix it, you got a stand it,” says Ennis. Their last meeting on Brokeback Mountain unleashes pent up resentment, disappointment and physical fury over their inability to publicly acknowledge their relationship. “Tell you what, we could a had a good life together, a fuckin good life. You wouldn’t do it, Ennis, so what we got now is Brokeback Mountain...It’s all we got,” says Jack, his tone laced with accusation and resignation. “I wish I knew how to quit you.”

Ang Lee’s visual masterpiece breathes life into Proulx’s story. Screenwriters McMurtry and Ossana are faithful to Proulx’s authentic and spare language. Proulx writes that she sent a letter to the president of Focus Features (the film’s distributor) and Lee “begging them to keep the language of the story intact...I feared the landscape on which the story rests would be lost, that sentimentality would creep in, that explicit sexual content would be watered down. None of that happened.” Cinematographer Rodrigo Pietro paints the western landscape (the film was shot in the Canadian Rockies) in sun-kissed, luminous light. The play of shadow and light defines space, lines and emotion within the context of the film’s scenes. Composer Gustavo Santaolalla’s sweeping and moving compositions, including a soulful guitar piece, lend poignancy and heart to the film, much like they do in “The Motorcycle Diaries.”

Lee’s ensemble of highly skilled actors give Proulx’s characters incredible dimension, validity and resonance. Gyllenhaal infuses Jack with emotional accessibility and a playful spirit, who at times reveals such sadness and pain. Ledger loses himself - his Australian self-assurance and city boy roots - in Ennis, Proulx’s emotionally locked protagonist whose words are mumbled, for fear that his thoughts and feelings might be heard. Ledger and Gyllenhaal’s chemistry is electric and palpable; their investment in Ennis and Jack is a testament to their artistry as well as to their professionalism. Although “Brokeback Mountain” tells the story of two men’s love for one another, at its core it is simply a film about love and all that it offers us: sweetness, passion and yes, inextricable pain. “The film is huge and powerful,” writes Proulx. “I may be the first writer in America to have a piece of writing make its way to the screen whole and entire. And, when I saw the film for the first time, I was astonished that the characters of Jack and Ennis came surging into my mind again, for I thought I had successfully banished them over the years.”

“Capturing the Cowboys” (Time Magazine reporter Josh Tyrangiel interviews writer Larry McMurtry)

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1151802,00.html

NPR - From Page to Screen: "Brokeback Mountain"

by Bob Mondello and Melissa Block

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5046849

Photo: Focus Features
"Brokeback Mountain" stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.