Go Tell It on the Mountain

I saw Brokeback Mountain last night. It's an extraordinary film, pervaded with ache. The characters' confusion, furtive joy, denial, passion (barely contained one moment, acted out the next) are amazingly nuanced and complex. I don't mean just the two men at the center of the story but their wives as well.

There's more I could say -- among other things, about a stunning scene between Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams that shows what happens when a couple's inability to communicate is so profound that it lasts into the time when they're no longer even a couple, right up to and through an explosion of emotion that lacerates both of them -- but I don't want to spoil the film for anyone who hasn't seen it.

Who cares if red-state America or straight America is or isn't going to embrace Brokeback Mountain? You could try to convince skeptics out there that it's a love story anyone could relate to. (I want to believe that, but I'm not sure; I think there are people who would never allow themselves to relate to it.) Or you could claim, without spin, that it's about the corrosiveness of shame and self-hatred born of the closet, of living in an intolerant world. Let's just say it's a beautiful, heartbreaking movie.