Everyone was talking about Brokeback Mountain in 2005, but it took me awhile to get in the mood to watch it. If I hadn't wanted to write a review about it, I'm not sure I would have stuck it out until the end.

Directed by Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon [2003]), the movie appeared on the awards lists of 50 institutes and other entities.

A list of just the Oscars and Oscar Nominations the movie received at the 2006 Awards will illustrate the stir it made.

Oscars
Best Achievement in Directing: Ang Lee
Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score: Gustavo Santaolalla
Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay: Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana (from a 1997 New Yorker short story by Annie Proulx).

Nominations
Best Achievement in Cinematography: Rodrigo Prieto
Best Motion Picture of the Year: Diana Ossana and James Schamus
Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role: Heath Ledger
Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role: Jake Gyllenhaal
Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role: Michelle Williams

Someone was quoted as saying that the quality of a picture begins with the casting. Here's the cast of featured actors in Brokeback Mountain.

Heath Ledger - Ennis Del Mar, taciturn, hardworking ranch hand. As the story opens in August, he's engaged to marry in November.

Jake Gyllenhaal - Jack Twist, a homosexual whose ambition is to be a champion bull rider. He seduces Ennis.

Michelle Williams - Alma, Del Mar's childhood sweetheart. When Jack comes for his first visit, she witnesses her husband exchange a passionate kiss with him. From that moment their marriage is doomed, but, typically of them both, they do not talk about it.

Anne Hathaway - Lureen Newsome, the privileged daughter of a wealthy agricultural equipment dealer. She's attracted to Jack at a rodeo. He is attracted to her father's money. After they marry, she becomes absorbed in business, although they do produce a son.

The story begins in 1963 when Ennis and Jack, both ranch hands in need of money, hire on to watch a large flock of sheep in Wyoming. (Although the story is set in Wyoming, most of the movie was filmed in the Canadian Rockies.)

The backdrop of mountains and forest is exquisite. Some scenes suggest Chinese watercolors with broad layers of color with tiny human figures at the base.

Viewers are left to infer much of the story for themselves.

Jack is a glib talker and something of a con man, but Ennis struggles to express his thoughts and feelings. Both men come from poor rural families and both had dreary childhoods.

Ennis was orphaned young and brought up by older siblings. Jack's parents are still living, but we sense that his controlling father never permitted him to feel that he was good enough.

The rules of their employer demand that Ennis stay in their base camp, and that Jack spend the nights several miles away, coming back to camp only for meals. When Jack grows weary of the arrangement, Ennis offers to take night duty with the sheep.

Because of the requirements of the job, they sleep apart until one night when they share Jack's whisky and Ennis is too drunk to ride back to the sheep. He beds down outside, but the night grows cold and Jack tells him to come into his one-man tent.

If I were to watch the movie a second time, I'd probably notice clues that Ennis is becoming sexually attracted to Jack, but the clues must be subtle, because the seduction scene seemed to me to come out of nowhere.

Jack initiates sexual contact. Ennis seems confused and reluctant, but then passionately accepts the situation.

The story moves across a period of 20 years. When the summer job is over, Ennis calmly takes his leave of Jack, who drives back to Texas. When the truck is gone, Ennis breaks down and weeps piteously.

The men are apart for three or four years with no contact. Ennis and Alma have two daughters, and Jack and Lurene have a son. Again it is Jack who sets things in motion.

Brokeback Mountain is billed as "a love story."

I can believe in Ennis's love for Jack, but I don't completely accept Jack as a loving partner.

Jack is already a practicing homosexual when he meets Ennis. Later we see him try to pick up a man in a bar. He travels to Mexico to make use of male prostitutes, and he establishes a homosexual relationship with the husband of one of his wife's friends.

Ennis, on the other hand, is a man caught up in a way of life he never had a chance to decide about. He tells of a time his father took him to see the bloody corpse of a homosexual who had been beaten to death by disapproving locals. The experience would have been enough to bury any homoerotic feelings natural to him.

The acting in this film is remarkable, especially that of the two (presumably) heterosexual men playing the parts of star-crossed male lovers.

It's a significant movie, but be aware that the love scenes will be disturbing to viewers for whom overly-erotic male-female sex scenes cause discomfort.

Ironic factoid: Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams really did have a baby together. The movie was filmed during the summer of 2004. Their daughter, Matilda Rose Ledger, was born October 28, 2005.