Review of 'Brokeback Mountain'

Sad and beautiful film about two cowboys (well, shepherds really, though one of them does ride in rodeos) who discover that they love each other. They live their lives in relative misery, waiting for the little time that they spend together back on the mountain in 'fishing trips' that don't really fool anyone, least of all their wives.

It's the late 1960s and early 1970s, and I couldn't help thinking how much happier they'd have been if they'd left Wyoming/Texas and gone to San Francisco. But they can't - at least the Heath Ledger character can't, because though he's more or less disconnected from almost everyone, he is still connected to his kids and doesn't want to turn his back on them. I once had an email conversation with a secretly atheist hasid, about why he didn't leave the community that he clearly held in such contempt, and he answered in much the same terms.

Watched on the big screen at Springhill, via informal download.