Film Movie Brokeback Mountain

Mark and I went to the Magnolia for the 11:00 am show on Sunday. I was prepared to be disappointed, knowing that very things ever live up to the hype of film critics exhausted by hours of watching junk.

I was very, VERY wrong. It is 24 hours later and I am still haunted by it. Both Mark and I choked up on the last frame (how rare is it that the emotional power of a performance lasts to the very end after the resolution of the story) when Ennis agrees to attend his daughter's wedding and folds up her sweater to put beside his shirt that he had retrieved from Jack's room at Jack's boyhood ranch home.

Heath Ledger's performance as Ennis is the stuff of legend. For once, it matters to me that he win the Academy Award although I suspect he will lose to Phillip Seymour Hoffman for Capote for deftly impersonating Truman Capote.

Having just watched Phantom and Charlie, Ang Lee's direction is a revelation. Everything is done in the service of the story and the actors. Essentially, he removes anything that might distract from what the actor's are doing. With his screenwriters, he makes sure that nothing jars, everything is inevitable. For example, there is a flashback to Brokeback that we had not seen where Ennis is happy and at peace with Jack, smiling at him and telling him that he will be back for dinner before he mounts his horse and Jack watches as he rides away. The connection is Jack watching as Ennis drives away after they have met again on Brokeback in their 30's. Introducing this flashback makes the interjected footage of Jack being killed seem just like part of a seam.

I can't praise this movie too much. I pray that it bears repeated viewings.