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Time Magazine
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
How Brokeback Mountain Holds Up—And Doesn't—20 Years Later
Ol' Brokeback got us good, didn't it? Ang Lee's 2005 drama about cowboys in love was a genuine cinematic phenomenon. Brokeback Mountain helped boost stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal onto the A-list. One of its lines—'I wish I knew how to quit you'—became a source-transcending classic, referenced with the persistence and fervor of Jerry Maguire's 'You had me at hello' and Titanic's 'I'm the king of the world.' Though Lee would go on to win the Best Director award at the 2006 Oscars, the film's loss of the Best Picture trophy to Crash elicited a minor outrage, with hundreds of people contributing to buy an ad in Daily Variety decrying the Academy's poor decision. A 2015 Hollywood Reporter re-polling of Oscar voters showed that they would have given the award to Brokeback over 'that Don Cheadle movie that nobody can remember' were they to do it all over again, and in 2018 it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. A box-office hit, with an $83 million domestic gross, Brokeback was standard-setting for modern LGBTQ+ cinema. It helped show that movies about same-sex love could make real money and that playing gay was no longer the career death-sentence it was once considered. In commemoration of its 20th anniversary, Brokeback Mountain is back in theaters, giving audiences the chance to fall for Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist's love story all over again. But it also gives us an opportunity to view the movie through a modern lens and apply contemporary sensitivities to a film that has been effectively canonized. Was Brokeback Mountain groundbreaking, or was it a gay love story trapped inside the conventions of a traditional heterosexual one? Were its central lovers authentic or merely shoved into containers its creators thought a mostly straight audience would tolerate? The answer is more complicated than a simple yes or no, and if nothing else, Brokeback Mountain remains fertile territory for pondering the representation of same-sex love in film and its continuing necessity. To any who might think we've progressed enough to make the movie's message quaint or devoid of urgency, there's plenty of evidence to the contrary. It may be true that its rerelease comes 10 years after the federal passage of same-sex marriage via the Supreme Court's Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, which helped codify social acceptance of gay people, at least for a time. But the current presidential administration's hostility toward LGBTQ people (on top of Clarence Thomas' indication that he's open to the overturning of Obergefell in his 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson opinion) suggests that Brokeback's depiction of the challenges same-sex couples face remains depressingly relevant. In the time since Brokeback's original theatrical run, pop-cultural discourse has changed considerably. The 2010s, in particular, saw an increased focus on matters of representation in criticism and especially in social-media analysis, particularly as it pertains to the depiction of marginalized groups. It is harder than ever to ignore that no major Brokeback player—not Lee, Ledger, Gyllenhall, Annie Proulx (who wrote the short story the movie is based on), producer James Schamus, nor screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana (the latter of whom also produced)—publicly identifies as a gay man. This is gay romance by putatively straight people. Much like the plaintiffs in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the legal challenge to California's Prop 8, which led to same-sex marriage being legalized in the state, the Brokeback heroes were hand-picked for their seeming regularity. Two cowboys who relish manual labor, pound whiskey, and engage in horseplay, they lack many of the gender-nonconforming traits that could complicate their appeal to mass audiences. When Ennis (Legder) tells Jack (Gyllenhaal), 'You know I ain't queer,' he really means it. He's practically breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to straight audience members, too. While the setting of Brokeback Mountain, where the pair first works together herding sheep, provides secluded idyll along the (theoretically) utopian lines of Fire Island, Jack and Ennis are largely divorced from gay culture. At one point, Jack suggests Ennis uproot his life and move close to him in Texas. Even though it is the '70s at that point in the movie and gay liberation is in full swing some thousand miles away, moving to a coastal queer hub like San Francisco is never considered. The bigger-picture stuff is ignored for the sake of telling a smallish love story. And it's a love that seems to come out of nowhere—there's virtually no indication that Ennis would be interested in Jack before Jack makes his move and invites his co-worker into his tent on a cold night. How Jack clocked Ennis and where he got his nerve remains a question that Lee and company didn't bother to answer, as if these characters are an inherent mystery to filmmakers exploring a world that's not their own. (There's even a set-up of Ennis taking a nude sponge bath feet away from Jack that elicits not a single glance from Jack.) When they do have sex, it at least initially buys into stereotypes. Jack is the more emotive, more loquacious member of the couple and as such, he is the bottom—as far as we can tell. Granted, this is a nuanced stereotype, and it's daring that Brokeback goes there at all. Many of the mainstream depictions of men who have sex with men around its time—The Birdcage, In and Out, Will & Grace—tip-toed around sex and/or portrayed their characters as having been practically neutered. Their hurried, relationship-consummating, seconds-long sex was much-discussed at the time of Brokeback's release, in no small part due to Ennis using his saliva as lubricant. But really, that one brief scene is the movie's only depiction of sex. Twenty years ago, the scene of their fervent kissing after having not seen each other for four years was perhaps all the passion that mainstream moviegoers could take, but it's telling that the depiction of Jack's first sexual encounter with his eventual wife Lureen (a transcendent Anne Hathaway, who deserved a Supporting Actress nod) is more explicit than that between Jack and Ennis; she's at least topless while the men remain clothed. But if Brokeback Mountain's revolution is mostly by concession, that doesn't mean it avoided challenging the status quo entirely. Ennis and Jack both go on to marry women and start families, seeing each other intermittently for 'fishing' and 'hunting' trips. They're cheating on their wives, living lies, and yet we are still encouraged to root for them. Jack also cruises for sex in Mexico and, we learn later, brought another man to his parents' ranch to work there. His non-monogamy is an affront to the respectability politics that Brokeback Mountain otherwise espouses. It is the emotional monogamy—a common rule of open couples—that matters here. The movie encourages a sophisticated reading of the love between Ennis and Jack. Their transgressions of enforced monogamy are not to be held against them—they're doing the best with what they have and we know it. Brokeback ultimately transcends its representational imperfections with pure heart. Even if it doesn't quite persuade us of Ennis and Jack's early attraction, Ledger and Gyllenhaal's performances sell their characters' love. This is a classic movie romance that ends up gracefully navigating the complications that its characters face by virtue of their same-sex attraction. If Brokeback Mountain played as irrelevant in 2025, it would be a good thing, a sure sign that as a culture, we'd left toxic and time-wasting anti-gay bigotry in the past. It is a failure of our culture that in some places in this very country still, Ennis' prognosis of his relationship with Jack still rings true: 'The bottom line is, we're around each other, and this thing grabs hold of us again, in the wrong place in the wrong time, and we're dead.' Earlier this month, Tristan Kern de Gonzales, the widower of actor Jonathan Joss, shared that he and his husband endured harassment and threats 'by individuals who made it clear they did not accept our relationship,' before Joss was fatally shot 'by someone who could not stand the sight of two men loving each other.' Investigators are looking into whether sexual orientation played a role in the crime, and though they haven't yet come to a determination, it's difficult to look beyond the alleged hatred that preceded Joss' killing. What Ennis fears, the violent murder that flashes through his mind when Lureen tells him of Jack's death as a result of an exploding tire, is still happening. Lee and company may have shaped this story to make sure it went down easy, and they succeeded in achieving the universal by invoking the longing that many feel, regardless of sexuality, for loved ones that they cannot be with for any reason. But its universality is a direct result of its precision about the complications arising from being two men in love in a specific time and place. Just as Jack sinks his hooks into Ennis, leaving him lovesick and shaken, so has this movie affected its audience. Twenty years later, it's enough to make you recite through gritted teeth, 'Brokeback Mountain, I swear…'
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The History of Sound' Review: Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor Star in a Gay Period Romance That's Like ‘Brokeback Mountain' on Sedatives
'The History of Sound' is a gay love story in which no one ever comes out and says what's on their minds. We get why. The film is set in the early 20th century, and its two lead characters start off as polite, buttoned-down music students in New England, not exactly the sort of people who get up in the morning with an inner cry of 'We're here! We're queer! Get used to our awards buzz!' Nevertheless, for this sort of movie to work, the scenes need to vibrate with an inner emotional hum. They can't just dawdle and meander into some flat zone of prosaic free-floating 'suggestiveness.' In 'Brokeback Mountain,' the two lead characters spent more time than not repressing who they were, and that turned the film into a tragedy. It's also one of the greatest movies ever made. Heath Ledger, speaking in a muffled drawl, showed you that a performance could be repressed and transcendent at the same time; his reticence broke your heart. By contrast, 'The History of Sound,' which might be described as a minimalist 'Masterpiece Theatre'-on-the-frontier riff on 'Brokeback,' is a drama that mostly just sits there. It's far from incompetent, but it's listless and spiritually inexpressive. It's 'Brokeback Mountain' on sedatives. More from Variety Neon Acquires North American Rights to Kleber Mendonça Filho's 'The Secret Agent' 'Homebound' Review: A Moving Friendship Drama Set Against a Politically Fractured India 'Romería' Review: A Budding Filmmaker Pursues Her Parents' Obscured Past in Carla Simón's Lovely, Pensive Coastal Voyage Lionel (Paul Mescal), raised on a farm in Kentucky, and David (Josh O'Connor), who grew up as a wealthy orphan in Newport, Rhode Island, meet one night at a piano bar when they're both students at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. The year is 1917. David is seated at the piano, singing an American folk song, and that catches Lionel's ear, because he grew up singing folk songs he learned from his fiddle-playing father. This is the music in his blood — and as he informs us during the film's opening narration, he's such a musically inclined soul that notes literally make him see colors. David, tickling the ivories, has an eager, wolfish grin and a taunting attitude — he's like a more ebullient Hoagy Carmichael. David, in his wireless oval-framed glasses, is more restrained and conservative. But it's clear that the two are musical soulmates and, as they lock eyes on each other, singing and playing into the night, maybe more. They stroll home in the dusky dawn, and David asks Lionel if he'd like to come up to his dormitory apartment for a drink of water. Lionel says yes, and before more than a few moments go by the two have tumbled into bed, without fear or hesitation. The following morning, Lionel wakes up to find the bed empty, though with a note from David on the pillow. It says 'Next Saturday?' In those two simple words, and in Lionel's look of beatific serenity, we can feel the promissory tug of romantic bloom. It's implicit, to the audience and to the characters, that they're living in a society where they can't be open about any of this — where it would be fatal to do so. I say implicit because nothing in 'The History of Sound' would ever be stated that overtly; if it were, the film wouldn't have the cred of its faux 'subtlety.' At the same time, the period setting, and Lionel's rural Southern background, helps account for the lack of copious dialogue. We're in an era, the film implies, when people weren't as self-conscious or effusively verbal as they are today. Lionel and David were born in the late 19th century, and the quality of their romance is that they simply fall in with each other and like being together. The love scenes, passionate but not too explicit, are tender visions of entwined flesh. If either of these two harbor any guilt about their attraction to each other, they don't show it. The romance gets interrupted by World War I. David goes off to fight in the trenches, and Lionel returns to the farm, which proves to be an unhappy experience, especially after his father dies. He's in a holding pattern. But then, in 1919, he receives a letter from David: 'Meet me Jan. 1 at the Augusta Train Station.' David, back from the war, wants Lionel to accompany him on an extended camping trip to record folk musicians in the wilderness of Maine. And as they embark on this journey, they enter a place of artistic and erotic and spiritual communion that feels close to paradise. David, who possesses the technology to record sound on wax cylinders, is a kind of early Alan Lomax figure, a budding ethnomusicologist who wants to 'collect' songs, to take the low-country majesty of folk music, captured in the raw, and elevate it through his recordings into something eternal. Oliver Hermanus, the South African filmmaker who directed 'The History of Sound,' is working from a script by Ben Shattuck (who wrote the short story the movie is based on), and he tries to build a stately picturesque style around the spareness of Shattuck's dialogue. The film is quite handsome, full of woodsy earth tones and dark clothing, without any bright colors to get in the way of the meditative somberness. But the flow of images is more functional than poetic. I would describe the film's style as Kelly Reichardt with less precision. Hermanus is relying a lot on the aura of his actors, but in this case he only gets half of what he needs. Josh O'Connor, as the outwardly brash but inwardly secretive and vulnerable David, makes his presence felt in every scene. But Paul Pescal, sporting a very mild Southern accent, never seems like a kid from Kentucky. He's too formal, too bereft of folksy humor. There's a stillness to Mescal's performance that's just…still. It doesn't radiate anything. And that's part of what accounts, I think, for the crucial turning point in the story — the one that fails to track on the film's own terms. In their backwoods recording venture, Lionel and David have become partners in love and sound. At one point, they have an argument that lasts for about 30 seconds (about whether they should have left a situation), and then they're grinning at each other like schoolboys again. So when David asks Lionel if he would consider trying to get a teaching position at the New England Conservatory, he's saying a mouthful. In spirit, it's practically a marriage proposal. He's saying: Do this so that we can be together. In 'Brokeback Mountain,' when Jake Gyllenhaal's Jack suggests that he and Ennis live together on a ranch in rural Wyoming, Ennis shoots the idea down. He says it won't work — that they'd be made as two queers, essentially outed by their living situation. The social intolerance that surrounds them is toxic, like fire from a pile of burning tires. But in 'The History of Sound,' Lionel and David, while they've on the down-low, have proven to be quite adept at it, and have displayed no visible anxiety about the need to conceal their affair. Trying to be together on a permanent basis would obviously be far more challenging, maybe fraught with peril. Perhaps it would be doomed. But surely the two brave and ardent men we've been watching could try. So when Pascal's Lionel says no, he's not going to go for that teaching position, I basically went, 'Huh?' The film's love story has run smack into its key obstacle, and the obstacle turns out to be…a script that needed a rewrite. We're halfway through the movie, and there will be many turns of events. It's 1921, and Lionel is now in Italy. He has sent letters once a month to David, and the letters have gone unanswered. Lionel will travel to Britain, he will become involved, romantically and sexually, with Clarissa (Emma Canning), but he will never stop feeling that ache inside him. He will be drawn, inexorably and over time, back to the New England Conservatory, back to the love inside him that dares not speak its name. All of which sounds, on paper, quite poignant and haunting. So do the scenes with Chris Cooper as the aging Lionel. But 'The History of Sound' is a movie that never fully finds a life beyond what it is on paper. It wants to wrench our hearts, but coming 20 years after 'Brokeback Mountain' did that very thing, this thin-blooded, art-conscious knockoff of that film's tragedy is a movie that may end up falling in theaters without making a sound. Best of Variety The Best Albums of the Decade
Yahoo
05-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Michelle Williams Shades ‘Crash' Winning Best Picture Oscar Over ‘Brokeback Mountain' by Asking: I Mean, What Was ‘Crash'?
Michelle Williams appeared on 'Watch What Happens Live' to promote her new FX series 'Dying for Sex.' During the interview, host Andy Cohen took a brief moment to call out one of her most acclaimed movies: Ang Lee's 'Brokeback Mountain.' Willians earned an Oscar nomination for playing Alma, the increasingly isolated wife of Heath Ledger's damaged cowboy. Cohen explained to Williams 'what an important movie 'Brokeback Mountain'' was to him and so many gay men at the time of its 2005 theatrical release, adding: 'I think it's still in my top two movies of all time. Did you realize at the time you were making that, what a profound impact it was going to have on people?' More from Variety Michelle Williams' Superb 'Dying for Sex' Is a Defiantly Joyful Tale of Terminal Cancer and BDSM: TV Review New York Film Critics Circle Sets January 2026 Awards Date Academy Apologizes for Not Naming 'No Other Land' Director Hamdan Ballal Amid Outcry From More Than 800 Voters 'Yes, because people were so open about it,' Williams answered. 'I remember doing the junket, you don't get an opportunity to see a lot of grown men cry, and that was the moment I think that we all knew it was going to be special to people.' Cohen then brought up the infamous 2006 Oscars where 'Crash' shockingly won best picture over presumed frontrunner 'Brokeback Mountain.' Many industry pundits to this day consider the decision to be one of the Academy's worst in history. 'Brokeback' had already won the BAFTA, Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award for best picture at that point in the season. Then 'Crash' pulled up the controversial upset. 'I was very upset about the best picture loss,' Cohen said. 'I mean, 'Crash'? Is that what won?' Williams then offered her own shade to the delight of the studio audience by asking. 'I mean, what was 'Crash'?' 'Thank you, I mean, who's talking about 'Crash' right now?' Cohen responded to silence from his audience. 'I hear a pin drop. Yes, very upset!' Ang Lee told IndieWire last year that 'Brokeback' winning best picture was so presumed that an Oscars stagehand told him to stay backstage and not go back to his seat after Lee was awarded best director. In the aftermath of the 'Crash' upset, many pundits accused the Academy of homophobia. 'Back then, ['Brokeback Mountain'] had a ceiling,' Lee explained. 'We got a lot of support — up to that much. It has that feeling. I wasn't holding a grudge or anything. It's just how they were.' Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week What's Coming to Disney+ in April 2025 The Best Celebrity Memoirs to Read This Year: From Chelsea Handler to Anthony Hopkins
