Entertainment Weekly
"[A] big, sweeping, and rapturous Hollywood love story that could turn out to be the most revolutionary movie of the year." 09/30/2005 p.68Film Comment
"[I]mmaculately made...with career-making performances by its two reluctant lovers, Gyllenhaal and Ledger....Count them both in at nomination time." 11/01/2005 p.71-72 Premiere
4 stars out of 4 -- "[O]ne of the truly convincing movies about romantic love to come along in years..." 12/01/2005 p.52-56 Entertainment Weekly
"BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is that rare thing, a big Hollywood weeper with a beautiful ache at its center. It's a modern-age Western that turns into a quietly revolutionary love story." -- Grade: A 12/09/2005 p.59-60 Rolling Stone
4 stars out of 5 -- "Ang Lee's unmissable and unforgettable BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN hits you like a shot in the heart. It's a landmark film and a triumph for Heath ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal..." 12/15/2005 p.161 Uncut
"[I]t's a nuanced and complex study of desire, loneliness and the ambiguities swirling beneath the accepted codes of rural life. And, as such, one of the finest movies of the year." 01/01/2006 p.128-129 New York Times
"The lonesome chill that seeps through Ang Lee's epic western, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is as bone deep as the movie's heartbreaking story..." 12/09/2005 p.E1 USA Today
"It's a heart-wrenching portrayal of unfulfilled Wyoming love....The movie soars for the duration..." 12/09/2005 p.4E Sight and Sound
"[T]he screenplay is a model of sensitive adaptation....The screenwriters' most significant contribution is their investment in well-defined, plausible female characters." 01/01/2006 p.50 Uncut
Ranked #11 in Uncut's Best Films Of 2005 -- "A beautiful, elegant, elegiac movie, directed with great sensitivity and enhanced by outstanding performances." 01/01/2006 p.82-83 Entertainment Weekly
Included in Entertainment Weekly's Top Ten Films Of The Year -- "[A] quietly revolutionary weeper..." 12/30/2005 p.114 Total Film
4 stars out of 5 -- "[A] beautiful movie....The wide-open spaces of Wyoming, with its jagged, snow-dipped peaks and too-puffy-to-be-true cloud formations, linger long after the credits have faded. There's also a fragile, internalised beauty..." 07/01/2006 p.116 Widescreen Review
"Stellar performances, a haunting Oscar-winning soundtrack, and beautiful cinematography make for an unforgettable story." 05/01/2006 p.65 ReelViews 8 of 10
Longing is such a potent element of the human experience that it has formed the fabric of numerous stirring motion pictures. Brokeback Mountain is one such movie - a tale of love and loss, of unrealized dreams, and of lives wasted by denying passion and accepting convention. The primary difference between Brokeback Mountain and say, for example, Clint Eastwood's The Bridges of Madison County, is that in Ang Lee's picture, the central relationship is between two men. And this isn't a platonic friendship. These men are as intimately involved as two lovers can be...Although the tale is well developed, and there is great emotional resonance in the push-and-pull between the characters and their world, Brokeback Mountain doesn't break new ground, except that this story has not previously been told (at least not in a major motion picture) with the gay spin. The sexuality of the characters is deliberately left ambiguous. Ennis would seem to be a mostly heterosexual individual who loses himself in a moment of passion with another man, who subsequently comes to dominate his thoughts. Jack, on the other hand, is at least bi-sexual, with a likely preference of men over women (despite his assertion that he's "not queer")...The film is based on a short story by Annie Proulx, and has been adapted for the screen by Diana Ossana and Lonesome Dove's Larry McMurtry. Brokeback Mountain isn't for everyone, but for those who are not bothered by the homosexual relationship, it offers a study in yearning, love, and loss. It didn't affect me as deeply as either The Bridges of Madison County or The Remains of the Day (both of which offer similar themes in different settings), but it evokes some of the same feelings. It's a brave and affecting effort from a director from whom we have come to expect worthwhile things. - James Berardinelli
Chicago Sun-Times 10 of 10
Ennis tells Jack about something he saw as a boy. "There were two old guys shacked up together. They were the joke of the town, even though they were pretty tough old birds." One day they were found beaten to death. Ennis says: "My dad, he made sure me and my brother saw it. For all I know, he did it"...This childhood memory is always there, the ghost in the room, in Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain." When he was taught by his father to hate homosexuals, Ennis was taught to hate his own feelings. Years after he first makes love with Jack on a Wyoming mountainside, after his marriage has failed, after his world has compressed to a mobile home, the laundromat, the TV, he still feels the same pain: "Why don't you let me be? It's because of you, Jack, that I'm like this -- nothing, and nobody"..."Brokeback Mountain" could tell its story and not necessarily be a great movie. It could be a melodrama. It could be a "gay cowboy movie." But the filmmakers have focused so intently and with such feeling on Jack and Ennis that the movie is as observant as work by Bergman...Ang Lee is a director whose films are set in many nations and many times. What they have in common is an instinctive sympathy for the characters. Born in Taiwan, he makes movies about Americans, British, Chinese, straights, gays; his sci-fi movie "Hulk" was about a misunderstood outsider. Here Lee respects the entire arc of his story, right down to the lonely conclusion...A closing scene involving a visit by Ennis to Jack's parents is heartbreaking in what is said, and not said, about their world. A look around Jack's childhood bedroom suggests what he overcame to make room for his feelings. What we cannot be sure is this: In the flashback, are we witnessing what really happened, or how Ennis sees it in his imagination? Ennis, whose father "made sure me and my brother saw it." - Roger Ebert
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