Brokeback Mountain

The Film

As I argued in a previous review, virtually every film to depict a same-sex relationship falls into the pattern of what I call the "Issue Film": in other words, one in which the social issues raised by the characters and their experiences take precedence over the characters themselves, whether the issue is sexuality, race, religion, or any other pertinent subject. This is not in itself necessarily a negative: many excellent films have been made that open our eyes to these issues and encourage us to think about them in new ways. When it becomes a problem, however, is when a film purports to be about characters, but these characters turn out to be little more than puppets whose strings are pulled by a director wishing to convey a certain message. Brokeback Mountain spends the better part of its duration desperately trying to convince the viewer that it is not one of these Issue Films, and yet, for all its posturing, it is extremely doubtful that it would have existed, or at least garnered so much attention, if not for the sexual orientation of its protagonists.

The film revolves around Ennis (Heath Ledger) and Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal), who, spending the summer of 1963 together on a lonely mountain in their capacity as sheepherders, find themselves irrepressibly attracted to each other. After deciding to act on their impulses, they agree never to mention what happened between them, and go their separate ways: Ennis to marry Alma (Michelle Williams), Jack to marry Lureen (Anne Hathaway). Some years later, however, Jack shows up at Ennis' door, bringing the memories of Brokeback Mountain rushing back. From there on, we follow the course of the two men's lives as they occasionally intersect over the years, and watch their secret destroy both their own lives and their loved ones.


Long before it was released, the film had been saddled by pundits as "the gay cowboy movie" - which, strictly speaking, is not entirely accurate, although I will admit that "bisexual sheepboy movie" doesn't have quite the same ring to it. Either way, this is not the first time director Ang Lee, whose filmography is diverse to say the least, has tackled the subject of a relationship between two men, having previously explored these issues, albeit in a rather different form, in 1993's The Wedding Banquet. However, whereas the earlier film made no attempt to shy away from addressing the social and domestic stigmas so often associated with homosexuality, the central conceit of Brokeback Mountain is that the "forbidden love" of its two protagonists could easily have taken on another form: it could have been a story about two lovers from different religious, social or ethnic groups, and it would arguably still have played out in much the same manner. Perhaps this is why the film never managed to truly resonate with me: beneath the superficial veneer of its depiction of an "unconventional" relationship, the characters themselves are neither hugely original nor even particularly interesting.

At least initially, neither Ennis nor Jack is a particularly sympathetic individual. For the better part of the film's duration, they are presented as being governed by uncontrollable lusts rather than genuine affection, and, while the final act does show that at least one of the pair genuinely loved the other, it's difficult to reconcile this with the fact that both men spend several years lying to their families. Some reviewers have argued that this contributes to their complexity, but I'm not personally convinced that there's much going on beneath the surface of either of them. Of the two, Jack is definitely the more impulsive, less able to accept only being able to see Ennis a couple of times a year at most, with the dialogue implying that he has had more than one affair behind Lureen's back, with both men and women. Ennis, on the other hand, is comparatively less adept at expressing himself, and seems better suited to simply buckling down and taking what he can get, so to speak (it is, after all, Jack who finally breaks the ice by appearing out of the blue on Ennis' doorstep). As far as characterisation goes, however, that's more or less all there is to it, and, while both Ledger and Gyllenhaal both deliver excellent performances, highly deserving of their Oscar nominations, they don't really add any additional complexities to their characters.


At times, it's hard to shake off the feeling that the film is bending over backwards to be as unremarkable - mundane, even - as possible, and yet at the same time it's difficult to imagine the film even existing without its "unconventional relationship". In my opinion, a recent film which did a far better job of portraying a relationship between two people of the same sex as something "ordinary" while still making the characters themselves interesting and unique was Pawel Pawlikowski's 2004 offering My Summer of Love, whose portrayal of a burgeoning relationship between two teenage girls managed to be subtle and nuanced. That's not to say that it makes Brokeback Mountain a poor film in comparison - both showcase excellent performances and cinematography, albeit in completely different circumstances - but it does feel considerably less laboured, less intent to somehow "prove" itself.

Ultimately, despite this rather restrained review, I don't want to give the impression that I didn't enjoy Brokeback Mountain. It's certainly a very good film, but I'm not convinced that it's an excellent one. It's beautifully shot, the acting is uniformally excellent, and there are several moments of highly intense emotional drama, but not a single moment stands out to me as being indicative of a classic film.

HD DVD Presentation

Arriving on HD DVD as a double-sided combo (the reverse containing a standard definition version of the film), Brokeback Mountain's 1080p, VC1-encoded 1.85:1 transfer is an oddly disappointing affair. I've seen around 30 high definition titles now (both HD DVD and Blu-ray), and this is definitely the least detailed of the lot, looking decidedly soft throughout, with the near complete lack of fine detail suggesting a blitz of the sort of filtering more commonly associated with standard definition releases. It's more than watchable, and there are no problems at all with the compression, but, flipping between the standard definition and high definition sides, I would have expected the difference between them to be more pronounced. There are also signs of edge enhancement throughout. Studio Canal's HD DVD of Basic Instinct remains, for me, the most underwhelming HD disc of all (bearing in mind that I haven't seen such supposed clunkers as the Blu-ray release of The Fifth Element), but this is not far behind it. If this was the first disc I had seen, I would have been wondering what all the fuss was about.

The audio comes in English and French flavours, both Dolby Digital-Plus 5.1 (encoded at 1.5 Mbps). The mix is adequate and serves its purpose, but isn't particularly noteworthy. Most of the time it might as well be mono, which is fine, because I highly doubt that an expansive surround sound mix would have contributed anything worthwhile. My one major complaint is, as it happens, not a fault of the disc itself, but Heath Ledger's dialogue is damn near incomprehensible at times, making the subtitles (available in English and French, for both the film and the extras) quite useful.

Extras

The HD DVD release of Brokeback Mountain replicates the bonus content from the recent 2-disc Collector's Edition DVD release. All of the film's extras are contained on the HD DVD side, with the DVD side replicating only A Groundbreaking Success - a rather odd state of affairs, with no evident explanation for this lopsided split.

At 11 minutes, Music from the Mountain focuses on the scoring sessions, interview with composer Gustavo Santaolalla, music supervisor Kathy Nelson, director Ang Lee, producer James Schamus, and various recording artists who lent their vocals to the soundtrack. Santaolalla discusses his collaboration with Lee and the desire to craft a minimalist score to match the inexpressiveness of the two characters, and to relate it to the locations, in addition to the songs and singers used to contextualise the piece.

A Groundbreaking Success, meanwhile, is a 17-minute piece featuring interviews with a variety of film critics, as well as Lee, Schamus, co-writer Diana Ossana, and other crew and cast members, stressing the "gay" element but emphasising that this was not the primary reason for its existence. Mention is also made of the (failed) homophobic attack on it by a religious right that quickly realised that their criticisms were simply serving as publicity for the film. Of all the various featurettes, this is arguably the strongest and most in-depth.

The 6-minute On Being a Cowboy is mostly completely flaccid. A rather cheap little "real life" piece, actually somewhat reminiscent of the educational pieces Disney includes on its lesser pieces, this looks at the training the two leads underwent in terms of horse-riding and other cowboy activities. Meanwhile, as its title would suggest, the 7-minute Directing from the Heart: Ang Lee focuses on the director and what the film means to him, with Lee himself, and various members of the cast and crew, discussing his directorial style. It comes dangerously close to veering into the territory or butt-kissing fluff at times, but thankfully the various interviewees manage to come up with something a little more interesting than the generic "Ang is so wonderful" comments that such featurettes tend to comprise.

Of the remaining two pieces, the 10-minute From Script to Screen is the best. It discusses the efforts of writers Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana to adapt the original Annie Proulx short story into a screenplay, mainly from the perspective of members of the cast and crew rather than the writers themselves. The pair of scribes to pop up on occasion, but I was rather disappointed not to gain any more of their insights. Finally, as the "main" behind the scenes piece, the 22-minute Sharing the Story: The Making of Brokeback Mountain one might have expected this to be the most solid, all-encompassing piece, although in reality it appears to be a piece of made for TV EPK fluff.

A 3-minute animated gallery of stills and conceptual artwork, set to score from the film, entitled Impressions from the Film, is also included.

Overall

The original DVD of Brokeback Mountain felt rather empty in terms of extras. Even in this more feature-packed variant, it still feels as if the bonus materials are only scratching the surface, providing a strangely superficial look at what is as much a cultural event as a movie. As such, in conjunction with the very disappointing transfer, this release really doesn't feel as if it's all that it could have been, although it is undoubtedly the best home video iteration of the film thus far.

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