Love, Lee

Behind Brokeback Mountain you'll find a river of tears.

By Johnny Ray Huston

I CAN'T HELP but bristle and feel like flipping the bird when faced with the type of condescending hype that claims Ang Lee's new film lends gay (not queer, mind you) relationships "prestige" through its high profile and Oscar bids. Yet while part of me thinks its lonesome cowboys could use a Taylor Mead, there is no denying that Brokeback Mountain is as great as Hollywood gets this year. Also Lee's best film to date, it is gorgeous early on and starkly devastating in its home stretch, thanks especially to Heath Ledger's for-the-ages performance as Ennis Del Mar. The poetic use of vast landscape is almost as impressive as the attention to detail – as Ennis's elder daughter and a would-be girlfriend, Kate Mara and Linda Cardellini cram a prize starring role's variety of subtleties into just one or two scenes.

When Lee came to town recently, I sat down to talk with him, discovering that another, lesser-known director's river of masculine tears just might connect his latest film with his previous one, Hulk.

BG: Would you say Brokeback Mountain is your second western, after Ride with the Devil?

AL: Ride with the Devil is a pre-western – only at the end, when it ventures into the frontier, does it become a western. Brokeback Mountain has a very elegiac tone, and in that sense it's a post-western. It's derived more from literature and real life than the movies or the codes of westerns. There's a strange mix or overlap; it's tough and macho, but also a love story.

BG: Some people have referenced westerns that have homoerotic subtexts when talking about Brokeback Mountain, movies like Red River –

AL: Yes, the masculinity of Montgomery Clift, or even someone like Paul Newman.

BG: I think of Montgomery Clift's masculinity in The Misfits as well. That film also has a two-bit rodeo setting.

AL: Jake [Gyllenhaal] has the Montgomery Clift role, though the subtext [of Red River] has now become the text [of Brokeback Mountain]. Heath brings the elegiac quality.

BG: On the surface, this film might seem completely different from Hulk. But that isn't necessarily the case.

AL: It's kind of a continuation. We all deal with our little green monsters and father figures. Both films look at the landscape of the West. With Hulk, I examine the subconscious.

BG: But would you say it's correct that you shift to a more lyrical form of visual storytelling with this film?

AL: Yes, it depicts a very nonverbal culture. You have to rely on movement and body language in the performances, and focus on framing the landscape – it's very grandiose and intimate, and it has to function both ways.

BG: The beginning of Brokeback Mountain goes a lot longer without dialogue than any Hollywood film I've seen recently.

AL: The way you tell a story visually is a basic element of filmmaking, and I like to go back to that.

BG: Speaking of filmmaking without much dialogue, do you admire the movies of Tsai Ming-liang?

AL: Yes. Did you see Tsai Ming-liang's The River?

BG: I love The River.

AL: There are shots in Hulk that remind me a lot of shots from The River. After making the film I talked with him about that.

BG: In this newspaper, one writer has observed that your films and the films of Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien share an ambivalence about the future and the past. Would you agree?

AL: I don't disagree, it's quite true.

They're a little older, or one generation older than me and Tsai Ming-liang, who is from Malaysia. We're sort of the outsiders in Taiwan who carry these Chinese traditions that have not entirely been accepted. We grew up with Western movies and Hollywood and mediocre Chinese films. But I'm more of a mainstream guy.

BG: While you may be more mainstream, you certainly differ from a typical Hollywood auteur in terms of the variety of films you've made.

AL: I'm quite fortunate in that I've had the success to allow me to call my shots and choose different material instead of being locked into a certain cultural booth. That's just the life I live, the friends I hang around with and circumstances.

American filmmaking is the best in the world, there's nothing like it, and I have a big appetite for genres. But even when you think you're moving further away from what you've already done, certain themes or traits will reappear.

BG: Over a decade ago, The Wedding Banquet addressed a subject that is now a source of national discussion. Brokeback Mountain is set in the past, but I wonder what you hope for in terms of people's reactions to the film now and in the future?

AL: I anticipate trouble, of course. But I hope the love story and the sensitivity of the movie will take care of it. I'm hopeful.

BG: This last question is a bit of a spoiler – is there supposed to be a sense of ambiguity about the fate of Jack?

AL: We see it from Ennis's point of view, so we can only guess. I think from Anne Hathaway's performance you can tell [Jack's] wife isn't telling the truth, and you wonder how much she knows. Ennis's natural inclination is to flashback.