I think the collection of stories the original comes from is one of best-written, most beautifully and sparsely put pieces I've ever read, and I mostly love all of Annie Proulx's works. So high expectations? You bet. Especially as all the reviews I'd read were very positive - Ang Lee's direction, the cinematography, Heath Ledger as Ennis Del Mar, fine cast of actors, and so on.
So was I disappointed? A bit, as could be expected. It is a rather beautifully shot film - in parts, and mostly the right parts. Brokeback Mountain itself, and the experiences the two boys share on it that we see in the first third of the film, is as peaceful and oddly idyllic as it needs to be, that haven for everything these two guys can't find in their day-to-day lives. They've captured this contrast well, as their lives are seen through glum boxy houses, peeling paint, faded marriages; but as we follow these little failures in both men's lives, it's so faithful and detailed and mundane that it really drags the pace of the movie to plodding, and the beauty of Proulx's quick-fire, to the point descriptions just slips away. With that, some of the emotional heart went too, for me. I was told of many people who left the theatre sobbing after the film, and I saw a few women wiping away tears as they left, but I wasn't touched, not like I was after reading the story.
It starts like this: Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist are two young guys who meet one summer up on Brokeback Mountain, where it's just the two of them, some amazing scenery, and lots and lots of sheep. Ennis is reticent and withdrawn, raised by his siblings and having lost his family ranch in childhood. Jack is the more genial of the two; and he wants to be a rodeo star, wants his father to acknowledge him in some way. One night, while sharing a bedroll to get out of the cold, they start a physical intimacy that grows into something more, and makes something less of their lives away from each other for the next twenty years. They leave each other at the end of the summer with no promises and less words, but after four years - Ennis has married his childhood sweetheart Alma, Jack a rodeo queen with a rich succesful daddy - they meet up again and rush head along into the affair again, leaving everything else in their lives to crumble like ashes. They snatch weeks three to four times a year, ostenibly on fishing trips, but instead travelling and staying on lonely landscapes across America to be with each other without anyone else finding out about their business.
Jack strays, frequently - Jack comes to accept his nature, closested as he keeps his affairs - but Ennis fights it all the time, never wants any other man than Jack and even then, hating himself for it. Even while pushing his wife away with his bottled-up anger at himself and the world, distancing himself from his daughters, poisoning his relationships after his divorce because he can't be himself and he can't be what Jack wants to be. Heath Ledger is wonderful in this role - he swallows his lines with the reluctance to the outside world that is in everything Ennis does, then lets the frustration out in measured scarily intense release - anger, sorrow, the oddest moments of happiness.
A measure of a good experience is the way it stays in the mind, or in the heart. While the movie as a whole doesn't have the staying power of the story that it comes from, there are moments in it - a flashback of why Jack continues to want Ennis over the years and years of being rebuffed, that perfect embrace before a fire; Alma's sad eyes flashing with the things she's always wanted to accuse her ex-husband of but never could (Michelle Williams, also wonderful); all these moments with the spark of the story in them - that kept coming up in my mind later, something to chew on and think about and be affected by. And so I think the film understands the story, even with its faults in how they retell it for film, and when the telling is not so pedestrian the movie really is very good; just the whole is not as great as it could've been.
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