Brokeback Mountain.* Directed by Ang Lee * Written by Larry McMurtry Larry McMurtry (born June 3, 1936 in Wichita Falls, Texas) is a novelist, screenwriter and essayist. McMurtry is best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1985 novel Lonesome Dove and Diana Ossana Diana Ossana is an American Academy Award-winning writer who has collaborated on writing screenplays, teleplays, and novels with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry since they first worked together in 1992, on the semi-fictionalized biography Pretty Boy Floyd. , based on the story by Annie Proulx * Starring Heath Ledger Heath Andrew Ledger (born April 4, 1979) is an Academy Award-nominated Australian actor. Biography Early life Ledger was born in Perth, Western Australia, the son of Sally Ledger Bell (née Ramshaw),[1] , Jake Gyllenhaal Jacob Benjamin Gyllenhaal[1] (born December 19 1980) is an Academy Award-nominated American actor. The son of director Stephen Gyllenhaal and screenwriter Naomi Foner, Gyllenhaal began acting at 11 years old. * Focus Features Breathe a sigh of relief that this exquisite gay love story has finally made it to the big screen--and it's actually good, Exceptional, even. The legendary Larry McMurtry and his writing partner Diana Ossana, working from Annie Proulx's story, have crafted a haunting and practically perfect romance, and director Ang Lee (Sense and Sensibility Sense and Sensibility is a novel by the English novelist Jane Austen, that was first published in 1811. It was the first of Austen's novels to be published, under the pseudonym "A Lady". ) deftly captures both the bitter and the sweet. In 1963, Ennis Del Mar (Ledger) and Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal) spend the summer together tending sheep on Wyoming's Brokeback Mountain. And ... things happen. (Lest you worry that the movie would wimp out on showing physical affection--it doesn't.) But what happens on Brokeback Mountain stays on Brokeback Mountain. That's the idea, anyway: Both men marry and have children. But they just can't keep apart, spending a series of "fishing trips" together up in the mountains over the course of two decades, rekindling a passion they can neither express nor ignore. "If you can't fix it, you've got to stand it," Ennis tells Jack. Ledger, adopting a soft-spoken twang reminiscent of Kris Kristofferson, is nothing short of revelatory, considering how ill-used he's been in so many other films. Gyllenhaal gets to play a lot of different notes, from triumphant to swaggering to downcast down·cast adj. 1. Directed downward: a downcast glance. 2. Low in spirits; depressed. See Synonyms at depressed. downcast Adjective 1. , and he hits them all perfectly. As the wives, Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway also nail their characters. Hathaway's portrayal of a 1970s Texan with money made me howl with recognition. Brokeback isn't just one of 2005's best films--it represents a new high-water mark for Hollywood's handling of gay stories. Whether or not multiplex audiences can handle Ledger and Gyllenhaal kissing, cinematic history is nonetheless unfolding before us. |
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