It is really quite interesting looking at a movie like Brokeback Mountain (2005) in the context of the 20 years since it’s release in theaters. For a lot of things, it was a pivotal film for many different things. It solidified director Ang Lee as one of the industry’s greatest filmmakers, earning him his first Oscar for directing, a landmark as the first Asian filmmaker to win that prestigious honor. It was also a crucial film in the budding acting careers of Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway and Michelle Williams. It was also a major touchstone in the all too brief body of work for actor Heath Ledger who sadly would be lost to us in a short couple of years after his appearance in this film. But, above all else, Brokeback Mountain stood as a monumental step forward for queer themed movies in Hollywood. In the 20 years since this movie came out, there have been many social progressions in queer representation in cinema, with the presence of queer characters and storylines no longer being niche, but rather a natural part of the fabric of the culture. But, 20 years ago, things were quite different, and Brokeback Mountain stood out much more as a provocative statement in it’s time. Over the years, we’ve seen attitudes change, and it puts Brokeback into a different frame now in retrospect. Does it still resonate with a culture that has seen so much change in 20 years, or is it becoming more of a relic of it’s time. There are many ways to dissect Brokeback Mountain as a work of cinema, but it’s place in queer cinema is where it has stood out the most. It certainly wasn’t the first movie centered on queer themes to be made, nor even the first mainstream film to center on queer characters. But it perhaps was the most profound statement made in it’s time about how Hollywood as a whole wanted to deal with queer rights in society which was to be fully supportive of it. And that was crucial as the fight for queer rights in America were reaching a breaking point.
One of the most provocative things about Brokeback Mountain was that it was telling an overtly queer story in a genre that typically was associated with hyper masculinity; the Western. The movie was adapted from a short story written by American author Annie Proulx. It covers the story of two cowboys named Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist who are hired to herd sheep in a grazing range near the titular Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming. Out in the middle of nowhere with only each other for company the two form an attachment which eventually turns into sexual desire. After the weeks long assignment ends, the two men go their separate ways. They both find new lives and jobs, get married and have children. But, there’s always that nagging draw in the back of their minds about the time they spent alone at Brokeback Mountain. They eventually reunite, and sneak away on camping trips which cover for their romantic flings. Over time, this secretive arrangement they’ve made for themselves takes it’s toll on their relationship as well as on their marriages. They know that if their secret gets out, it’s more than just public shame for them; in certain parts of the country it also means death. For the sake of their sanity and what’s left of their relationships with their broken families, they part ways for good. Years later, Ennis learns that Jack did in fact run afoul of the wrong kinds of people who looked down on their love, and it leaves an empty place in his heart now with no one else to share his secret love with. Annie Proulx wrote her story as a reflection of what she observed in rural North America. She would spot lonely men in country bars who often appear to be looking at the other men, but had to put on a rugged exterior in order to throw off suspicion. She didn’t know for sure what these men were hiding, but it gave her the inspiration for writing about cowboys who had to hide their secret homosexual desires behind the aesthetic of a rugged outdoorsman, as she stated herself in an interview, “I watch for the historical skew between what people have hoped for and who they thought they were and what befell them.”
Her short story was acclaimed when it was first published and immediately garnered the attention of screenwriter Diana Ossana. Ossana sought Annie Proulx’s approval to adapt the story into a feature script, which Proulx agreed to despite reservations about whether it could be done. While Ossana was an accomplished writer in her own right, she also had a writing partner on this screenplay that would be crucial for the adaptation; acclaimed writer Larry McMurtry. McMurtry was very much the godfather of modern Westerns with an impressive body of work that included dozens of novels and short stories. He’s perhaps best know for his Lonesome Dove series, which was turned into an acclaimed TV mini-series starring Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall. Movies that were based on his novels have also become classics, including neo-Westerns like Hud (1963) and The Last Picture Show (1971). McMurtry and Ossana had collaborated on a few novels before and they had a great rapport together. Larry loved the story that Ossana brought to him with Brokeback Mountain, and he had the Western bona fides to give it that genuine rugged American cowboy flavor. They completed their screenplay almost a year after the original publication of the story in 1998, but the film would languish in development for a couple years. Hollywood was still hesitant to invest in a provocative and unapologetic story about gay love, especially as the conservative Bush administration was coming into power. New Queer Cinema icon Gus Van Sant expressed interest in the script for a while, with the intent of casting Matt Damon and Joaquin Phoenix in the roles of Ennis and Jack. That eventually fell through as Gus became more intent on filming his Harvey Milk biopic project instead. Eventually, producer James Schamus at Focus Features decided to take a chance on the film, and he handed it over to his long time collaborator Ang Lee. Lee was an interesting choice to tackle this project, as he was very versatile filmmaker. In between this and his Oscar nominated martial arts epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Lee was just coming off his failed attempt at a Marvel super hero movie, Hulk (2002), proving that he was open to making any kind of movie regardless of genre. It wasn’t Lee’s first attempt at a queer themed storyline, which was 1993’s The Wedding Banquet, but it would be his first attempt at a Western. Still, Brokeback Mountain had extraordinary luck in not only having a team of prestige writers and filmmakers in their corner, but with Focus Features involved they were getting the backing of a major studio as well.
Brokeback Mountain was released at a very crucial time in American society. We were entering a hotly contested debate over the matrimonial rights for gay and lesbian couples in the United States. In 2004, Massachusetts became the first US state to recognize same-sex marriage as a legal right for it’s citizens. This set off a firestorm from the religious right, saying that it was an affront to “traditional marriage,” and they began to push back on this groundbreaking advancement in gay rights. Unfortunately for many in the queer community, the anti-gay right wing had the political muscle to get push back. Republican president George W. Bush and his administration used this as a wedge issue in their re-election campaign and were pushing for more bans on same-sex marriage across the country. Sadly, the majority of states did ratify these bans into law, including deep blue California with their controversial Proposition 8. There was even a move to write a ban of same-sex marriage into the Constitution with a “traditional marriage amendment.” This was the flashpoint that Brokeback Mountain was brought into; a moment where the debate over same-sex marriage was the primary focus of the American “culture wars.” In a way, this was both a blessing and a curse for the movie. One, it was a prestige film that was going to garner more attention because the subject it was tackling was very much a focal point of the cultural conversation at the time. But, it was also going to become the poster child for this same era of conflict, and become the target of the same backlash that the queer community was facing during this time. The movie would be the talk of the town, but also the focal point of a debate that it may not have been built for. Regardless, the movie premiered to critical acclaim when it first released in the Fall of 2005, and it was for the longest time seen as the clear front runner in the Oscar race for that year. It’s eventual loss to Crash (2005) of course would set off another firestorm of it’s own.
The Oscar controversy aside, Brokeback Mountain would have a more lasting effect on the industry that did lead to profound change not just in Hollywood, but in the culture as a whole. With a solid box office and substantial collection of awards to it’s credit, Hollywood was finally seeing that queer themed films were actually quite valuable and worth investing in. This was helpful for Gus Van Sant’s previously mentioned Milk (2008), which became an Awards season success just a few short years later. But it wasn’t just with prestige films that we were seeing this change happen. The stigma of queer representation in movies became less and less of an obstacle and more of a feature of the industry. Gay characters were popping up more and more on the silver screen and on television, and not just as a stereotype there to be made fun of. The same evolution was also happening across the country, with a backlash starting to grow against the backlash to queer rights. The incoming Obama administration took a much different approach towards the LGBTQ population. While initially playing things down the middle, then Vice President Joe Biden stirred the conversation again by rightly pointing out how absurd these same-sex marriage bans were. Eventually the administration embraced the idea of decriminalizing same-sex marriage, and California’s Prop 8 was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, thereby nullifying all bans on the books and making it legal in all 50 states. How much Brokeback Mountain had a hand in this change is uncertain, but the movie certainly put focus on the conversation that was desperately needed, and perhaps helped to strengthen the resolve of Hollywood to no longer ignore this very vital community in the culture at large.
It is a much different world now than it was back when Brokeback Mountain was first released into theaters. Attitudes towards same-sex relationships have certainly changed. The stigma around same-sex marriage is almost completely gone, with now a vast majority of Americans having a positive opinion about it, with only the most rabid religious fundamentalists having any issue with it today. Even still, there is still a lot of people out there trying to silence and erase queer voices in media. The Trump administration in particular has courted many people intent on rolling back queer rights into his government, while also hypocritically proclaiming himself to be an ally for the queer community. The times have changed, but a movie like Brokeback Mountain faces a challenge in trying to remain a relevant factor in this conversation. Does it hold up in these changing times. One thing that has negatively effected it’s place in queer cinema is surprisingly the way it deals with the relationship between it’s two characters. One of the ways that Hollywood has dealt with garnering sympathy for the rights of queer people in society is to turn their stories into tragedies. It does play into the underdog aspect of wringing sympathy from the viewer towards the plight of this persecuted community, but it does also send the wrong message to people who are still struggling with their identity. This is what a lot of people today identify as the “kill you gays” trope, where a gay character is often doomed in the narrative as motivation for the plot. Queer people don’t deny that the hardships of their struggle for rights need to be documented, but they also believe that these stories should also be balanced with stories of affirmation and triumph as well. The fact that Brokeback Mountain ends on such a downer may be crucial for it’s own story, but what kind of message does it send to a young viewer still struggling to come out to see that queer relationships often end in heartbreak or tragedy. It’s perhaps why much more queer themed movies today try to show more triumphant stories about love and adversity than the tragedies that often flavored their presence on the big screen before. It also helps that many more of these movies are coming from a more insider perspective, made by queer filmmakers for the purpose of being inspirational. Annie Proulx, Diana Ossana, Larry McMurty and Ang Lee are all well-meaning in telling this story, but they are also coming at it from an outsider perspective, which comes across as being more about pity than anything else. It’s a good thing that we are moving beyond movies like Brokeback Mountain and presenting queer characters and storylines that don’t have to be marked by tragedy in order to be successful.
It works much better to look at Brokeback Mountain on it’s own merits as a story about love blossoming in the unlikeliest of places. Ang Lee’s involvement serves well here, because he is never once trying to thrust the message of the movie to the forefront. He presents the film as an unexepected love story framed within the aesthetic of the American West, and how that contrast plays out. There’s no cinematic flourish to the love-making scenes in the movie; they play out in a very realistic way, with both men not really knowing exactly what to do in the situation. There’s a naturalistic flow to Ang Lee’s direction, with him playing the scenes out as honest to life as possible. It’s not a titilating movie or a preachy one either. He’s concerned first and foremost with the lives of these characters, and how the forces of society are weighing down on them. It helps that his actors approached the material with the same kind seriousness. The film’s most standout performance, however, belongs to Heath Ledger. Ledger, who had been a rising star in Hollywood for some time, was finally given the oppurtnity to play a role with great emotional depth, allowing us all to see what he really was capable of as an actor. And we saw the making of a superstar with this performance. Ledger’s performance as Ennis del Mar is a total transformation, showing emotional depth and command over a character that is truly impressive. You also don’t even feel like he’s acting, as he just embodies this character wholly. It’s through his performance that we especially feel the schism between the way a man like him presents himself publicly, with a stoic cowboy exterior, and how he feels internally with his desire to embrace the man he loves. Jake Gyllenhaal’s performance is a bit showier and doesn’t quite stand up as well as Ledger’s, but the chemistry between the actors still works. The real surprise though is Michelle Williams as Ennis’ lovelorn wife Alma. The actress, who up to that time was most well known for the primetime soap Dawson’s Creek, was finally given the chance to act in a film where she could really show her dramatic chops, and she has since become one of Hollywood’s most celebrated and awarded actresses. Sadly, Heath Ledger was unable to see the legacy of his performance play out after his untimely death in 2008. But there was one positive outcome of his work in this movie that still literally lives on to this day. Both Ledger and Williams fell in love during the making of this movie, and they had a daughter together named Matilda who was born in 2005, right when the movie was hitting theaters. Now 19 years old, Matilda is carrying on the torch of her late father and keeping his memory alive.
It’s undeniable that Brokeback Mountain is a pivotal film in the history of queer cinema, but it’s also a good thing that Hollywood has also moved past it. As queer themes have become more mainstream in movies not just on the outskirts of Hollywood, but by the actual studio system itself, the more provocative films of the past now look like time capsules of a different time period, when things were not so great. But, that also doesn’t mean that these films should be forgotten either. We need to still see where we once were to know how far we have come. Brokeback Mountain was made to make a statement at a crucial time when it almost looked like we were about to enshrine discriminations against same-sex relationships into the Constitution itself. With gay marriage now not just the law of the land, but also embraced by the vast majority of Americans, the statement made by movies like Brokeback now seem quaint and irrelevant. But, complacency often leads us to forgetting the importance of our hard fought for rights and it can lead to an erosion of those rights over time if we are not careful. That’s why movies like Brokeback Mountain are still important, because it reminds us of the struggle and what it took to get where we are as a community. When it first came out, Brokeback Mountain was undeniably provocative and stirred a conversation worth having. As a young twentysomething closeted gay man when this movie first came out, I too struggled with how to respond to it. I shamefully tried to dismiss it too, running away from my own feelings because the movie was very much showing me the struggle that came with being queer in America. But over time, I saw why the struggle was necessary and I was able to accept who I am without fear, and in turn, I accept the movie much more now as a cinematic milestone. I acknowledge that I am a better man today, and while I still have some reservations about the movie (particularly with it’s tragic gay tropes), I do now wish to celebrate it for what it did for queer representation in cinema. Back then, some of us wished we could quit Brokeback Mountain, but now with the world once again challenging our rights in the queer community, we need this movie and the many more films of the Queer Cinema movement to inspire us to fight for a better future again.