For someone who watches a lot of movies, there are also a lot of iconic ones I haven’t seen. Chief among them, until last weekend, was “Brokeback Mountain.” The movie follows two men — Jack, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, and Ennis, played by Heath Ledger — throughout the years of their lives following their meeting at a summer job in 1960s Wyoming. The pair forms an intense romantic, emotional and sexual relationship that complicates their lives as they attempt to start their own separate families. 

The film isn’t perfect, but it absolutely bowled me over. I knew a good amount about “Brokeback Mountain” before going into it, but nothing could have prepared me for the actual magnitude and intensity of the film itself. Watching this film, especially in our current political climate, elicited an additional kind of heartache. Much of the core of “Brokeback Mountain” is about the double-edged sword that is the pain that repression causes and the harsh realities of societal perceptions and oppression. As a note, there are spoilers from here onward. 

Ennis and Jack’s relationship is one of intense passion and longing. They are unable to live in their relationship free and out in the open, and this results in intense ramifications for not only them but also their families. Ennis and Jack continue their relationship into adulthood, but they do so in secret, frequently leaving to go on trips together and attempting to find hidden moments in which they can be together. However, in their day-to-day lives, they both at some point end up married to women and creating families. The relationship between Jack and Ennis then reflects harm back to their family, a reminder that repression harms more than just the self. 

One of the most heartbreaking and emotional scenes of the film occurs when Ennis’ wife, Alma, sees Jack and Ennis kissing outside their house after they reunite. This is the first time Ennis and Jack have seen each other in years, and you’re desperate for them to be together — for them to be able to act on their love. However, the intercession of Alma’s view of this moment undercuts it with a severe level of heartbreak. Jack and Ennis’ inability to be fully together and their attempts to assimilate into a heterosexual world create harm for both themselves and the people they’re performing heterosexuality with. The inability to live as one’s self has ramifications for both the person themself and all those around them. 

This is not to say that Ennis and Jack’s sexuality is wrong, but rather that the world has placed levels of oppression upon them that disable them from being who they truly are, which in turn serves only to harm everyone around them. In their everyday lives, Jack and Ennis do not inhabit spaces that allow them to be together or to live in their queerness. It is only in private or in nature that they are able to do so. The use of nature then throughout the film, especially the fact that Jack and Ennis’ relationship begins in nature and is centered around tending the earth itself, is a metaphor for the fact that their relationship is natural — that their attraction and love for each other is true, is real, is pure. 

This grounding in nature serves as a further breakdown of the Western story and masculinity as a whole. Ennis and Jack are able to be their fullest selves in nature — they are men who love and are loved, who give and are given to. They offer themselves fully and completely to each other in this space. It’s only when they return to the everyday world that their relationship becomes dangerous. 

The limitations and expectations that society places on them are what puts them at risk and prevents them from being truly together. This is pointed out throughout the movie but is made abundantly clear in the final scenes, in which Ennis finds out that Jack has died. The scene cuts between Ennis on the phone and images of Jack being beaten and killed. Jack is killed because of his queer identity — he is discovered and brutally murdered for it. The world of the film is not one that offers safety to queer people. It is a clear demonstration of the violence and pain that a heteronormative hierarchy of society places on queer people. 

I have complicated feelings about this ending. On one hand, I think it’s important to show how harmful and oppressive society can be, but on the other, I don’t know if that kind of violence needs to be reproduced in a film. That being said, the scene is shot tastefully, showing enough violence for the viewer to understand what is happening while also not showing the entirety of it. “Brokeback Mountain” is a complicated film for many reasons, but especially because of this ending. It shows the sharp pain of the world while also working to indicate that one day Ennis and Jack will be together again, and perhaps that is enough. 

In the end, this isn’t a movie about queer joy, it’s about queer pain. And while I am a firm believer that not every movie about queer people should be about pain and heartbreak, it’s also imperative to recognize the importance of this film. Released in 2005, “Brokeback Mountain” was an early mainstream queer story — it garnered multiple Oscar nominations and even won for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Score. It effectively helped to pave the way for some of the queer cinema that would follow in its wake. 

Additionally, the film made conversations about queer content much more mainstream. As grim as the film is, it’s also deeply moving and can serve as a reminder that there is still time, that we should be working to make real societal change and that queer love is vibrant, expansive and beautiful. Love is love is love is love, and carrying that message into our everyday and into resistance in a world that may try to say otherwise is imperative. This is a film that isn’t only good and important based on the content of the film itself, but also more broadly on its enduring legacy. “Brokeback” helped to open the door for many important conversations, and now, even 20 years later, it can continue to do the same.