Brokeback Mountain

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is a thoughtful, lyrical, eventually frustrating examination of two men's romance over many years. Though Ennis and Jack never call themselves "gay" or "queer," they do love each other and share a sexual relationship. The film is as much about silence and repression as it is about passion. It's Alma's silence that makes the film feel so serious. Her pain is neither exquisite nor elegiac. It's only hard. As soon as she sees the men embrace, Alma becomes the tragic bearer of knowledge.

Ennis' lack of language, initially clench-jawed mumbling, is eventually subtler, especially in his relationship with his daughter, Alma Jr. (at 19, played by Kate Mara). She observes her father closely and does her best to keep him from taking up -- after his divorce from her mom -- with a perky barmaid. "You don't say much," notes the girlfriend as the two sit together at a table, watching Ennis lean over jukebox. "But you get your point across." Brokeback Mountain gets its point across, too: The men are anguished. They act on their pain in different ways, and the big wide Wyoming landscape -- so mighty, so simple, so overwhelming -- reflects their efforts to be together, to stay apart, to resist expectations and to succumb to them.