I can't get that movie out of my mind. Outside of the hotness of seeing Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger wrestle (the only thing that comes closest is Alan Bates and Oliver Reed, naked wrestling by firelight in "Women in Love" - awesome!)...um...it's hot in here...where was I?

Oh yeah. The pain of loving. I tried to recast Brokeback Mountain a couple times toward the end, with the trad male/female dynamic, and it wasn't as affecting. Which made me itch to write a story with the trad dynamic and MAKE it as affecting. It's basically forbidden love...and then I remembered that Shakespeare did it already, and did it well, with Romeo & Juliet. And of course, there's always Tristan and Isolde, which came before R&J. Not to mention the hundreds of romance novels written in the past couple hundred years.

But I digress. During the movie, I remembered reading the story when it first came out - shock of all shocks - when Alma tells Innis she'd left him a note in the fish bag. That scene spurred the memory of reading it, and I remember being shocked, curious, interested but I remember very little about the two men. I think I should reread the short story to get the picture.

I'm saying this all wrong, I think. The movie moved me, affected me so that I'm still thinking about it after three days. But what will stick in my mind is Heath Ledger's performance - the insularity of his character, the love and despair he feels (OMG when he punches the wall in the alley...) and the need, drive, total recklessness of Jack, the way Gyllenhaal brought that out. The cold that permeated the movie, not just on Brokeback or whistling around Riverton but also in the relationships the two men had with their wives.

On Innis' part, it was love; and Jack was the only one to come between him and Alma. On Jack's part, I think it was mostly love, but also he'd discovered he loved, was attracted to, men *before* the time with Innis on Brokeback. His need eventually lead to his death, chillingly foretold (but not on purpose) by Innis all those years ago.

At any rate. We walked out of the theatre shivering from the movie and I spent the rest of the afternoon tearing up at odd intervals.

I love this movie. Beautifully shot, amazingly acted - not a single false note anywhere. If you haven't seen it, do.