Entertainment Weekly (Festival Coverage)

Owen Gleiberman

"A big, sweeping, and rapturous Hollywood love story that could turn out to be the most revolutionary movie of the year! A film in which love feels almost as if it were being invented. It is also a rare crowd-pleaser with the potential to change hearts and minds."

Newsweek (Festival Coverage)

David Ansen

For pure emotional impact it was hard to top Ang Lee's groundbreaking Brokeback Mountain, a love story, based on Annie Proulx's great short story, that left few dry eyes."

"… played with great imploded passion, by Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger. What a relief to see homegrown movies that aren't always in a rush."

Newsday (Festival Coverage)

Gene Seymour

"Lee's skillful and faithful adaptation of Annie Proulx's short story, aided by screenwriters Larry McMurty (Lonesome Dove, The Last Picture Show) and Diana Ossana, coaxes a haunting, persuasive atmosphere along with a rich, yet understated passion. The latter attribute is embodied by Ledger's performance as the laconic Ennis Del Mar, which had many in the audience touting him for an Oscar nomination.

USA Today (Festival Coverage)

Harlan Jacobson

"Both Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger give nomination-worthy co-lead performances."

The Wall Street Journal (Festival Coverage)

Joe Morgenstern

"Ang Lee's daring, stirring…" "By now we have learned to expect fine performances from Jake Gyllenhaal, and he certainly gives another one, but the great discovery is Heath Ledger, who reveals the tortured soul of a Marlboro-manly American deeply in love with a man."

Time Out New York

Joshua Rothkopf

"Ang Lee was quietly returning to form with a genuinely bold film. Brokeback Mountain is very likely the most audacious neo-Western ever made."

"…the gradual unraveling of Brokeback Mountain's warm central relationship, beautifully plotted by Larry McMurtry from an E. Annie Proulx short story…"

New York Magazine (Toronto Coverage)

Ken Tucker

"The love story is neither unconvincing nor tawdry, and while Jake Gyllenhaal is predictably good, the real breakthrough here is Heath Ledger in a surprisingly nuanced turn as Gyllenhaal's partner."

New York Observer (Festival Coverage)

Rex Reed

"A Masterpiece! It is destined to be one of the most talked-about films of the year – and one of the most beloved! A work of such courage, complexity and greatness that no easy one-liner could ever do it justice. Visually enthralling and emotionally overpowering. The acting is superior. A magnificent love story."

The New York Times (Festival Coverage)

Manohla Dargis

"Ang Lee does right by his stars and, in a crucial supporting role, the undervalued Michelle Williams. Jake Gyllenhaal's sensitive portrait will be no surprise to his admirers; Heath Ledger's wrenching performance is the stuff of Hollywood history."

NY Daily News (Festival Coverage)

Jack Mathews

"If there was one sure Oscar bet at Toronto among movies, it was Brokeback Mountain. Heath Ledger who is a revelation. Jake Gyllenhaal, also a potential nominee. Besides the two male stars, the film features terrific performances from Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway – like you've never seen her."

NY Daily News (Festival Coverage)

Jack Mathews

"If there was one sure Oscar bet at Toronto among movies, it was Brokeback Mountain. Heath Ledger who is a revelation. Jake Gyllenhaal, also a potential nominee. Besides the two male stars, the film features terrific performances from Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway – like you've never seen her."

NY Post (Festival Coverage)

Lou Lumenick

"Fresh from winning the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, Ang Lee's heartbreaking Brokeback Mountain digs beneath the homoerotic subtext of countless westerns and presents a very good Jake Gyllenhaal and an extraordinary Heath Ledger as a pair of smitten '60s cowhands."

Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitiution

Eleanor Ringel

"It's directed by Ang Lee, so you know it's well done, and the theme is certainly resonant. Heath Ledger…possible Oscar nominee."

Boston Globe (Toronto Coverage)

Ty Burr

"Acting was the main attraction in Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain. The film also marks the director's return to the quieter emotional territory of The Ice Storm."

Brokeback Mountain is surprisingly honorable about what its characters can say and are even able to say, and if it has strong acting from Jake Gyllenhaal as one of the men, it has in Heath Ledger's tortured yet terse Ennis Del Mar a performance of Oscar Caliber"

Boston Globe (Festival Coverage)

Ty Burr

"The film that I've heard – and felt – the most enthusiasm for is Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain. Lee is a master of conveying repressed emotions in a way that nonetheless moves audiences, as he does to great effect with two cowboys (Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger)."

"Ang Lee doesn't dictate how an audience should feel; he just presents the characters in such a real, human way that the men and women, heterosexual or otherwise, share the agony of their self-denial."

Chicago Tribune (Festival Coverage)

Mark Caro

"The film that I've heard – and felt – the most enthusiasm for is Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain. Lee is a master of conveying repressed emotions in a way that nonetheless moves audiences, as he does to great effect with two cowboys (Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger)."

Ang Lee doesn't dictate how an audience should feel; he just presents the characters in such a real, human way that the men and women, heterosexual or otherwise, share the agony of their self-denial."

Dallas Morning News (Festival Coverage)

Chris Vognar

"Heath Ledger is the heart and soul of Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee's masterful and unique Western. Jake Gyllenhaal, also excellent.”

Social reactionaries will have their say (as they do in the film), but Brokeback, which captured the top prize at the Venice Film Festival last week, is the most textured and achingly romantic film of the year.

The leisurely rhythms and epic scope have more in common with John Ford than the 'queer cinema' movement personified by Todd Haynes and Gregg Araki.

On Heath Ledger:

“His performance in Brokeback Mountain is still revelatory, a clenched-jaw masterpiece that goes way beyond mannerism and into the soul of a tormented and deeply conflicted cowboy."

Miami Herald (Festival Coverage)

Rene Rodriguez

"By Sunday night, the early critical concensus had it that the best movie shown here thus far was Brokeback Mountain, director Ang Lee's heartbreaking love story between two cowboys over the span of two decades…Ledger, who is virtually guaranteed an Oscar nomination for his performance in the film."

The Hollywood Reporter (Venice Film Festival coverage)

Ray Bennett

"Annie Proulx's 1997 short story in the New Yorker has been masterfully expanded by screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana to provide director Ang Lee with his best movie since Sense and Sensibility in 1995."

"boasting a fine cast topped by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal."

"Pulitzer Prize-winner Larry McMurtry and his recent writing partner Diana Ossana use a large canvas for what is really an intimate story. They develop the secondary characters with great insight and compassion. The women in the lives of Ennis and Jack are given full attention, and the acting, especially by Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway and Kate Mara, as Ennis' daughter Alma at age 19, is deeply affecting… The fine details of the West are as precise as you would expect from a Larry McMurtry piece, and Ang Lee's adroitness with the excellent cast is on full display, particularly in the brave and moving performances of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. The dusty towns of Wyoming and Texas are contrasted with the spectacular Canadian Rockies, splendidly filmed by Rodrigo Prieto, and the film benefits enormously from composer Gustavo Santaolalla's melodic and plangent score."

Variety (Festival Coverage)

Todd McCarthy

"The most chameloenlike of directors, Ang Lee, pulls off yet another surprising left turn in Brokeback Mountain."

"An outstanding performance from Heath Ledger."

"Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana have faithfully and perceptively retained the tone and the particulars of the tale in their screenplay."

"Making all this play in a mainstream-style movie represents a real tightrope walk for the writers, directors and, especially, the actors. All hands manage it through a shrewd balance of understated emotion and explosive physicality."

"Both young thesps are game, credible as cowboys and unselfconscious with the verbal and physical intimacy. But while Jake Gyllenhaal is engaging as the more freewheeling of the two, Heath Ledger is powerfully impressive as a frightened, limited man ill-equipped to deal with what life throws at him. Mumbling, looking down, internalizing everything, Heath Ledger's Ennis at times looks as though he's going to explode from his inchoate feelings. Perf could scarcely be more different from his terrific work in Lords of Dogtown, and the combo makes it a dazzling year for Heath Ledger. Michelle Williams gives Alma a quality of slow-burn devastation that is touching, and Anne Hathaway provides an entertaining contrast in wifely disappointment. The numerous small supporting roles are sharply etched, a sign of Ang Lee's sure hand with the material. The beautiful, rugged locations are majestically captured by lenser Rodrigo Prieto. The passing years, from the early '60s to the late '70s, are subtly indicated in the production and costume design, hair styles and gingerly aging makeup, while Gustavo Santaolalla's conventionally supportive score is nicely abetted by a host of period and setting-appropriate tunes."

Weekly Variety (Festival Coverage)

David Rooney

"It's not just refreshing; It's almost startling to encounter movies like Brokeback Mountain. But sitting through Ang Lee's achingly delicate cowboy love story, Brokeback Mountain, is a restorative experience capable of erasing months of bad movies in a single two-hour swoop."

"What in other hands could have become an agenda movie about same-sex love in a hostile environment instead has been sculptured by Lee into such an uncommonly lyrical, poignant account of romantic yearning and deprivation that it seems to have come from a far less cynical age. He has given Annie Proulx's story of the American West both cultural specificity and an acutely felt, melancholy universality."

www.emanuellevy.com

Emanuel Levy

"Grade: A-. An extremely touching love story. Ang Lee's best work to date. Brokeback Mountain redeems Lee's reputation as a major, versatile director, showing again his undeniable talent in depicting complex, multi-nuaced relationships in various locales. The screenwriters meet the challenge of taking a spare, brief, and intense short story and managed to maintain its purity while vastly increasing its scope. As powerful as the story is, it's the direction and acting that gives it flesh, blood, and above all, emotion.

Brokeback Mountain is one modern film that cannot be charged with being cynical or ironic. Though grounded in a specific historical era and paticular geographical locale, the movie has a undeniable universal appeal. In many ways, it's a grand, old-fashioned movie about two men fighting against all odds to preserve their love. Brokeback Mountain is as much a tale about impossible love and yearning as it is about the extent to which men (and women) possess the inner strength to live completely fulfilled lives in a rigid, codified society that presents inhibitions on different or "deviant" form of love. Proulx's story has been faithfully but masterfully expanded by McMurtry and Ossana, resulting in a sharp and poignant screenplay. The writers use a large canvas for what is really an intimate story. They develop the secondary characters with great insight and compassion. Ledger and Gyllenhaal's performances anchor the sprawling film as they convincingly age with the passing of time.

Powerfully underplaying, Ledger brings an astonishing combination of vulnerability and strength to Ennis. A pure love story, Brokeback Mountain is full of mysteries and ambiguities. The whole idea of love that never fully expresses itself, and never really resolves itself, is fascinating to watch, and should appeal to anyone who's been in love or had a yearning for love."

www.SpiritualityHealth.com

Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

"Ang Lee shows us once again that he is up to the challenge of exploring the turmoil of individuals who yearn for love that lasts. The director, who has a special talent for drawing out affecting performances, does so with Health Ledger who plays a cowboy that keeps a tight rein on his words and his emotions." Brokeback Mountain works upon our emotions as we see these two men who struggle against the passage of time and drain their energies in relationships that do not fulfill."

Inside Entertainment (Canada)

Kendon Polak

"That an unspoken, intimate bond develops between two people thrown together on a two-man mission through a deserted Wyoming mountain range in the summer of 1963 is the power of Proulx's poetic nerve."

The Guardian (UK) (Festival Coverage)

B.Ruby Rich

"Extraordinary. Stunning. Every once in a while a film comes along that changes our perceptions so much that cinema history thereafter has to arrange itself around it. Brokeback Mountain is just such a film. It's a shift in scope and tenor so profound as to signal a new era. It's a great love story, pure and simple. Brokeback Mountain joins the ranks of great literature as much as great cinema. Ang Lee delivers a virtually forensic vision of desire, denial and emotional cost. The most important film to come out of America in years."