BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN

 
Went with O to see BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN at the weekend. Ang Lee's film has been much discussed, both while in-production and during it's release, and I was really looking forward to it. Sadly I was not as blown away by it as I was expecting to. It would have been good to have had some emphasis in some scenes but they all had the same slow pace with an inevitable slow fade to black at the end. HOWEVER.... I have found the film hovering over me like one of the large black clouds hovering over Brokeback Mountain itself and it's bleak vision of a Love That Dare Not Speak It's Name in Wyoming is difficult to forget.

Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as the two men caught up in a love that they hardly understand themselves give career-best performances. Ledger inhabits the role as if born to it, unable to express the emotion that churns within he speaks as if every word has to be double-checked in case it gives him away. There are also telling performances by Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway as the men's wives, both growing more disillusioned as the year's go by. Randy Quaid as the rancher who brings the two men together initially and Linda Cadellini as a bar waitress who is also left hurt by falling in love with the Ledger character also shine in their few scenes.

Oh and Anna Farris, so toe-curlingly vapid as the Hollywood actress in LOST IN TRANSLATION, makes an impression here as a chattering airhead wife at a function attended by Gyllenhaal and Hathaway. The photography by Mexican cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto is jaw-droppingly sweeping.