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Longing and loneliness

PLAYING THE COWBOYS: Jake Gyllenhaal (right) and Heath Ledger in a scene from Brokeback Mountain.

Brokeback Mountain (English)

Cast: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal

Director: Ang Lee

This is the Heath Ledger double bill week. On the one hand he is the flamboyant Casanova and on the other he is Ennis del Mar, a reticent ranch hand in Wyoming who falls in love with Jack Twist a rodeo rider one lonely summer in 1963 when the two are tending sheep. Brokeback... , which got director Ang Lee an Oscar for best director, is a film about a love that cannot be. That the lovers happen to be men in the 60s is just by the way - they could belong to different religions or ethnic groups and the story would be still current.

Based on a story by Annie Proulx, the film traces the story of Jack and Ennis as they fall in love, marry (Ennis to his sweetheart Alma and Jack to rodeo queen Laureen) and over the next 20 years continue to meet.

The film is heartbreakingly sad - for Jack and Ennis who cannot be together, for their wives and the children. While Jack is more accepting of his orientation, Ennis, whose father shows him a man beaten to death for living with another man, is ashamed and scared of his feelings.

The acting is pitch perfect with Heath Ledger leading the way as he becomes invisible inside Ennis' character. Gyllenhaal is the quicksilver Jack Twist whose doe black eyes flash yearning, desire, impatience, bitterness, hate, laughter and love.

The women - Michelle Williams plays Alma whose face freezes into a mask of misery after she sees the men kissing and Anne Hathaway as Laureen - are brilliant.

There are many reasons to see this film including the luscious cinematography and the soaring score but above all for its honesty in cutting to the bone of the anatomy of relationships.

Mini Anthikad-Chhibber

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