Ang Lee's bold and heartbreaking love story, based on a 30-page novella by Annie Proulx, is a masterpiece.
I doubt you will see another film this year that stirs the heart so profoundly as Brokeback Mountain.
The Taiwanese director achieves cinematic alchemy: gorgeous cinematography, haunting orchestral score, elegant screenplay and jaw-dropping performances from the four young leads.
Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana's beautifully measured script has been lingering in the minds of Hollywood producers for the past seven years.
The quality of the writing, as Lee's film attests, was never the sticking point - it was the central romance itself between two men. Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, sensibly ignored the homophobic hysteria and all those actors who turned down the film are now kicking themselves.
Ledger and Gyllenhaal are leading contenders for this year's Oscars; Brokeback Mountain is saddling up as the front-runner for Best Picture.
The story centres on ranch hands Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal) and Ennis Del Mar (Ledger) who cross paths one summer, both looking for work on the mountainside.
Struggling to disavow the homosexual desire which draws them together in ultra-macho 60s Wyoming, Jack and Ennis are torn between their forbidden longings and the affection for their wives, Lureen (Anne Hathaway) and Alma (Michelle Williams) who end up casualties of Jack and Ennis's war with their true natures.
