“Brokeback Mountain,” 11 March 2006 (2005), theater. We saw this gorgeous film at the Lexington Flicks. Won’t they ever fix the damn sound system and get better copies?. Even with the viewing flaws, this is a stunning, painful film about two gay sheep herding cowboys who can’t come to terms with themselves and can’t live the lives they know they should. Heath Ledger is brilliant as the taciturn, closeted, mostly inarticulate yet deeply loving and emotional Ennis Del Mar. He is so good I now question Hoffman getting the Oscar. Jake Gyllenhalle shines as the softer, more troubled Jack Twist. Both give performances of profound depth. Excellent supporting work by Randy Quaid as the bigoted rancher who hires them that first summer and Michelle Williams as Ennis’s wife Alma. Ennis and Jack fall in love in a summer of sheep herding but it can’t be realized. The times and the world of ranching and the American west aren’t ready, to say the least. Stonewall never happens in this universe, although you know that Jack knows it’s going on in the world outside. Ennis never seems to get it. Maybe he just can’t. This Ang Lee piece (Oscars for best directing and Larry McMurtry-best screenplay) is brilliantly photographed. It is a loving and very sad film filled with grace and pain. It felt to me as though their love remains adolescent and pure (although their situations become more and more complex) because it’s never allowed to truly ‘become’. This is a very good film. See this one. Although Bronwen and my mom disagree with me, I think this one should have won the Oscar for best movie. I wonder whether in addition to the ‘homie’ vote for Crash there was something of a concern about being seen as too ‘pro-homo’. Very interesting looks at rural poverty and bigotry