Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Brokeback Mountain is a raw, powerful drama about an unexpected and forbidden love that grows between two young men hired to herd sheep on a Wyoming mountain in the summer of 1963. Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist begin as strangers, become friends and, after a single passionate night, fall into a deep, complicated bond that will shape their lives for nearly two decades. When the season ends they separate and each tries to build a conventional life — wives, children and steady work — yet they keep returning to one another in secret, unable to fully live without the other. The film follows their decades-long affair with a steady, often heartbreaking intimacy: quiet, tender moments of connection, long stretches of yearning, and the painful consequences of living a life half-hidden by social expectations and ideas of masculinity. Over the years their relationship is sustained by furtive meetups and “fishing trips,” but it is also marked by jealousy, regret and the limits imposed by the world around them, culminating in a devastating final reckoning. As a viewer you’ll experience both sweeping, majestic landscapes and restrained, deeply human performances that make the characters’ emotions feel immediate and unavoidable. The story is at once beautiful and tragic — emotionally intense, elegiac, and quietly searing — leaving you to reflect on love, loss, identity and the cost of lives constrained by fear and convention.

Actors: Jake Gyllenhaal, Heath Ledger, Michelle Williams

Director: Ang Lee

Runtime: 134 min

Genres: Drama, Romance

7.0 /10 87 /100 7.7 /10 7.8 /10