Brokeback Mountain
June 2006 Reviewed by: Charlotte Meyer Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

People seem to know what happens in Brokeback Mountain without even having seen it; so much has been said and written about it. "The gay cowboy movie" is the usual tag. But its director, Ang Lee, and the two leads, Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, don’t call it that. Nor do the people who have seen it. They are all more likely to say it is a tragedy of doomed love, a story that has been retold for centuries.

It may be a timeless love story, but it is set in a particular time and place -- Wyoming, 1963. The story examines "rural western social situations," says Annie Proulx, author of the short story the screenplay is based upon. "Place and history are central to the fiction I write." (The story appeared in 1997, a year before Matthew Shepard, a gay man, was beaten and left to die in the countryside of Wyoming.) According to Proulx, the cowboy is still an ideal of masculinity in Wyoming, and both of her characters aspire to it. Ennis (Heath Ledger), however, is never more than a temporary ranch hand unable to support his family, and Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a rodeo bull-rider reduced to selling lawn tractors for his father-in-law. In this context, the homosexuality they try to escape is even more tragic -- and dangerous.

All those who resisted seeing the movie in the theater can now enjoy the DVD at home. It is a movie of our time, winning three Oscars and earning five nominations: Ang Lee for Best Director and three of the five nominations for acting. Michelle Williams is moving as Ennis’s young wife, especially in her stunned reaction when she realizes that her husband loves someone else. With this DVD, the intense and often wordless exchanges among the characters transfer well from the big to the little screen.

The spectacular mountain scenes won cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto a nomination too. They beg for a big screen. The aerial shots cover vast stretches of snowy peaks and tree-covered slopes. Colors are rich, images sharp and deep. It’s not often we see the American West this beautifully shot. (Some of those thousands of sheep that Ennis and Jack neglect are only CGI anyway, and viewers won’t notice them either.) Gusto Santaolalla’s score won the film yet another Oscar, and it deserves playback on a good home system.

If you’re hungry for more of that spectacular scenery, you’ll get it in the four featurettes, which were shot on location. One is a commercial promo, but the other three are informal. In "On Being a Cowboy," we learn that Heath Ledger, who grew up on farms in Australia, was already a skilled rider, but Jake Gyllenhaal was put through an intense "cowboy camp." Another featurette is on Ang Lee’s directing style, and the third on writing the script. Together, they let us see how seriously everyone involved took the project.

Much more than "the gay cowboy movie," Brokeback Mountain is now a DVD not to be missed.

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