Director: Ang Lee
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Heath Ledger, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway
Best quote: 'I wish I knew how to quit you.'
Defining moment: Ennis and Jack’s first, aggressive sexual encounter inside a tent
Love on the range
Robbed of an Oscar by the most undeserving Best Picture winner in history and made the subject of countless ‘gay cowboy’ jokes, Ang Lee’s tender, crushing tale of unspeakable love has endured as a masterpiece of quiet devastation. Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal are ranchers in 1960s Wyoming, the latter an outgoing rodeo rider, the former so repressed he’s rendered nearly mute. Meeting as young men on a summer job tending sheep, their pull toward each other proves too strong to repel, igniting a relationship that spans 20 years, even as social mores and their own internalised self-hatred won’t allow it to fully idealise. But Lee’s film, adapted from a short yet sweeping story by Annie Proulx, isn’t a melodrama, nor a political statement. Rather, it’s a humanely observed character piece, which extends equal sympathy to the wives of the two leads, played by Anne Hathaway and Michelle Williams. It’s a heartbreaker all around, but one that affirms love’s power, in whatever form it may take. MS.