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Both men end up in heterosexual marriages, Ledger's character to Alma, played by Michelle Williams …

"If you can't fix it, you gotta stand it," says Ennis. He and Jack accomplish that by meeting up for "fishing trips" during which no fishing takes place. Over the course of these years, Jack is feeling perpetually jilted on his drives back home to Texas, while Ennis' efforts to resist his love for Jack turn him into an angry, bitter drunk who's always looking for a fight. Years fly by in which neither man is fully engaged with his family, while pining for a person he only sees sporadically. Their furtive love isolates them and makes their worlds smaller until they see no one but each other.

But despite the intimacy these two want to share, there's a certain formalism between Jack and Ennis that stems from their seeming inability to admit, even to each other, who each of them is. A conversation late in the movie includes Jack referencing an affair he's supposedly having with a ranch foreman's wife when the audience knows that the affair is actually with the foreman himself. Ennis, in return, goes into a homophobic rage when Jack lets on that he goes down to Mexico for gay sex. It's likely the result of a number of factors, but both men are deeply unsettled by their homosexuality.

The narrative's focus on Jack and Ennis means that the audience is left largely to guess at the painful ramifications the men's infidelities have on their families. It's the movie's greatest weakness that it never fully develops the wives' characters, and they're often relegated to cliché s. After a big splash, Lureen becomes little more than a peroxide blonde prop whose true feelings about her husband are inscrutable. Michelle Williams is, thankfully, given more screen time, and her quivering heartbreak and eventual rage are among the most resonant emotions of the movie.

… and Gyllenhaal's character to Lureen, played by Anne Hathaway

But for all the potential messiness of a story about two married men who carry on an affair with each other, the movie maintains an emotional distance from its subject by focusing almost exclusively on the men involved, both of whom are characters trying to stuff their emotions to one extent or another. Brokeback Mountain creates vast plains of space for the audience to interpret Jack and Ennis' actions and the hopes and fears that motivate them. It's quite possible that no matter what the viewer believes about homosexuality, he or she will be able to read their own stance on the issue into this story.

The film has already earned seven nominations for the Golden Globes, and multiple Oscar nominations are all but certain to follow. Ledger and Williams—who both earned Globes noms—especially stand out, both conveying reams of emotion with dialogue that probably only covers a few pages. But as much as Brokeback Mountain is being touted as a groundbreaking movie for its depictions of homosexuality, it is populated with people with conventional attitudes about homosexuality. And though it's presented as a story of thwarted love—of ache and longing and regrets—it's also ultimately a story about the relationships that shape us … for better and for worse.

Talk About It

1. The tagline for Brokeback Mountain is, "Love is a force of nature." Do you agree? Do we get to choose whom we fall in love with? Do we get to choose our sexual orientation? Why or why not?
   
   
2. Scripture says homosexual sex is sinful (Lev. 18:22, 20:13; Rom. 1:26-27; 1 Cor. 6:9-11). How should the church engage those who hold different beliefs about homosexuality? Should Christians expect all people to be heterosexuals? Why or why not? What does this mean for how Christians should treat gays?
   
   
3. Ennis' parents died when he was young. Do you think the loneliness he experienced as a child played into his attraction to Jack? If yes, how so? When he got married, why didn't Alma's love satisfy his need for companionship?
   
   

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We received a huge response from readers to our review of Brokeback Mountain, the controversial new Ang Lee film depicting a gay relationship between cowboys.