It took eight years to make it to screen the script was widely admired, but no one seemed brave enough to touch it. The details of his death are left up to interpretation in both story and film: hate crime or accident?Īdapted from Annie Proulx’s 1997 sparse and haunting short story of the same name, Brokeback Mountain was a passion project of screenwriters Diana Ossana and Larry McMurty. Ennis’s fear and inability to believe in-or try for-a future together, and Jack’s relentless pursuit of it, drives a wedge between them. Jack schemes for a way for them to build a life together, away from society, while Ennis doesn’t believe such a thing is possible. The men intermittently meet for clandestine “fishing trips” and motel rendezvous. As years pass, both marry: Ennis to sweet, doleful Alma Beers (Michelle Williams) and Jack to outgoing, ambitious Lureen Newsome (Anne Hathaway). The men meet and fall in love during a summer herding sheep in the pristine isolation of Wyoming’s (fictional) Brokeback Mountain. Starring, at the time, up-and-coming heartthrob actors Ledger and Gyllenhaal, the film caused a frenzy for its undaunted depiction of sex, desire, and love between two men. Ruby Rich, Brokeback introduces the melancholic tale of the troubled relationship between two “cowboys” over the course of two decades. Widely considered a watershed moment for “ New Queer Cinema,” a term coined in 1992 by scholar B. theaters for the first time on Decemto a storm of controversy and excitement. Director Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain premiered in U.S. It has been 15 years since Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) went off to herd those sheep.
Heath Ledger as Ennis Del Mar, left, and Jake Gyllenhaal as Jack Twist in Brokeback Mountain (Photo credit: Focus Features)