Film: “Brokeback Mountain” (2005) with Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal

There was a time when gay people weren’t fabulous, or when they weren’t the first people to get a res at a pistol-hot restaurant.

There was a time when two poor shepherds in the middle of nowhere found themselves in love and didn’t know what to do about it.

This is the story of “Brokeback Mountain,” the 2005 masterpiece that lost the best picture award to a movie called “Crash.” Anybody remember “Crash?” Don’t all raise your hands at once.

In “Brokeback,” Ennis del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) meet in the summer of 1963 on a job herding sheep out on the Wyoming plains.

Emmis is a man of few words but gradually lets his guard down, warming up to Jack. “Friend, that's more words than you've spoke in the past two weeks,” says Jack after one conversation. “Hell, that's the most I've spoke in a year,” replies Ennis.

One night, Jack invites Ennis into his tent as it is too cold for the latter to sleep outside. One thing leads to another and afterwards Ennis is horrified.”I ain’t queer,” he says.

How indeed could they be queer? Both have wives and kids. They wrassle cows, ride horses and shoot elk. But love is love is love. So over a 20-year period they stay in touch and occasionally get together for a weekend of “fishing.”

Alma, Ennis’ wife (played by young Michelle Williams) caught them snogging, and knew exactly what’s going on but silently suffers. Years later, she confronts Ennis with her discovery that the fishing pole he claimed he was using still had a price tag on it. Lureen (Anne Hathaway before she became a star) is Jack Twist’s sexy young wife back in Texas.

The Academy failed twice that year: Ledger didn’t win an Oscar either. Shame. The actor doesn’t just play Ennis; he inhabits him—no less an authority than “Brokeback” author Annie Proulx said so. Ennis is never more himself when he is around Jack, yet in one of the saddest lines of the movie he screams at Ennis, “Why don't you just let me be? It's because of you Jack, that I'm like this! I'm nothin'... I'm nowhere.”

Like the great silents, “Brokeback” doesn’t need much dialogue. The sweeping panoramas of the Canadian Rockies do all the talking. Thanks to cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto for making the middle of nowhere look so gorgeous.

Twenty years later, “Brokeback Mountain” has lost none of its relevance nor wisdom about the human heart. Ledger died in 2009 but his best movie lives on. Directed by Ang Lee (Oscar), scored by Gustavo Santaolalla (Oscar) and part of the New Yorker Festival currently at Film Forum, NYC. I’m glad I never quit it. #iykyk

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