Depending on where you fall in the millennial age group, there is a chance that you have an opinion about Brokeback Mountain (2005). It is the formative piece of gay cinema, symbolic of a larger discourse around what was about to change in media representation. Here were two men that loved each other, and the very fact they were cowboys sent up alarm bells for the more conservative-minded viewers who saw it as an afront to one of America’s richest mythological figures. Given that it would go on to have one of the most notorious awards season payouts in 21st century history, it is difficult to say this film has left any part of the zeitgeist.
At the current moment, Brokeback Mountain is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a limited theatrical rerelease. Given the ongoing popularity, it makes sense to reassess and see what has aged well. In the broad strokes, time has revealed how quaint the story is compared to the backlash. Had it been released 10 years later, there would be more concern over casting heterosexual actors or relying on the “bury your gays” trope no matter how well executed it was. It’s a world that has grown more tolerant and ambitious with where storytelling can go. In 2005, the idea of playing a gay character was more of a career risk and held many back from larger careers. Unless you were a lesbian being ogled for male attention like in Anger Management (2003), you were never going to be taken seriously.
This is to say my current reflection has revealed something upsetting. Brokeback Mountain was a trailblazer of queer cinema. It was supposed to open doors and provide opportunities for even more nuanced stories. In some defense, it has. Christopher Plummer’s Oscar win for Beginners (2011) reflected a more optimistic outcome. Here was a man who got to grow old and celebrate his life as he wanted to. It was contrary to other contemporary winners like Sean Penn as Harvey Milk: a man whose political influence is critical despite his assassination. It wasn’t enough to turn the tide entirely, but by the time of Carol (2015), there was a sense that gay characters could experience happiness without dire consequences.
The tragic irony is that despite ushering two decades worth of more ambitious creativity, Brokeback Mountain’s messaging felt more relevant for its 10th than its 20th. Whereas one could look at 2015 and notice the legalization of gay marriage alongside films like Carol, 2025 feels like a powder keg that has been exploding for at least three years. The art is still challenging societal norms. There’s more of a social push towards tolerance. However, the forces that be are filling the national discourse with shame to anyone who doesn’t fit a regimen not dissimilar from the mythological cowboy. In recent years, there have also been protests in California to remove Harvey Milk’s name from textbooks as a footnote about activists. With historical names being erased and stores backing out of rainbow capitalism, where is the progress?
I’m not sure that I would burden Ang Lee with needing to reshape national discourse for the next few decades with one film. That would be farcical to believe that any narrative holds that much power. However, I think reflecting on Brokeback Mountain at 20 has only made me cognizant of the ways that this feels closer to a parabola than the ascending slope that I want to envision. Karl Marx once said that history often repeated itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. Given that we live in a time where queer artists recently infiltrated underpopulated Hetero-Awesomeness events, I’d say there is some reason to laugh no matter how short term it is.
For me, Brokeback Mountain is one of those formative titles less because of what it meant to me and more from the larger discourse. In 2005, I was 16 and often put in more compromising positions if I wanted to see movies. While I saw titles that my parents disapproved of, the larger potential of escaping to see R-Rated dramas was unfathomable for another year at least (longer if you factor in a driver’s license). On some level, it made anticipation more thrilling because there were more hurdles to get through. There wasn’t any way to see Brokeback Mountain until it appeared on HBO, and even then a faithful TV Guide was the only way to figure out when.
I say this all as someone only a year removed from Catholic school and, at the time of the film’s limited December release, a little over year since announcing my goal to distance myself from the church. Even then, there was that familiar conversation around gay culture in a public high school that made even being curious about Brokeback Mountain intimidating. It was about men having sex. The argument of people not wanting to think about people’s bedroom activities fueled the conversation, at times removing any sense of larger identity. It could be that the only tolerated gay characters felt closer to asexual with the more uninhibited having this subtextual predatory quality in their minds. They couldn’t see a world where a gay person contributed a lot of value to society and, by admitting that you saw the film, you were in some ways a convert to a lost cause.
This was 2005 during The Bush Administration. Values were very different. Even in states known to be as “liberal” as California, gay marriage was illegal. It’s a fact that remained true even as I entered college when a philosophy teacher I had spent an entire lecture explaining how he had gay friends but was voting for Prop 8. This was 2008, and I hesitate to think of how well this speech would’ve gone over a decade later.
There isn’t enough time to really dig into the ways that it was cool to just be homophobic. On some levels, it’s left me with lifelong struggles to overcome certain stigma and maybe has given me a jagged defense mechanism. In high school, I was more likely to play devil’s advocate and presume gay tendencies just to amuse myself. I needed to understand their reasoning. When they asked if I was Thomas or Tom, I’d say “I go both ways.” Anything to get something less guarded. I think it came at the expense of me sometimes not really having a strong sense of self, but the willingness to prod never fully went away.
The older I’ve gotten, the more I realize that the views of masculinity at the time created personal conflicts. I never wanted to be macho. The 80s roid-rage machine gun iconography was grotesque and I wasn’t fully able to remove the effeminate alternative with the caricatures I had seen. So to stick sexuality in the middle of that created conflict that I wasn’t ready for. Nobody wants to be ostracized, and certain internalization ran pretty deep. Even with gay friends, it felt like something alien. I could be supportive, but the efforts to not recoil proved difficult. Maybe it’s more the byproduct of being an introvert who finds outward expression challenging, but none of it makes sense. This idea of men being strong and silent felt ridiculous in ways that were uninspiring.
If you had to look at my personal chronology, Brokeback Mountain wasn’t a revolutionary movie. There was nothing gained by watching it other than my ability to witness a gay film in a household that would most likely mock me for doing so. It’s why I didn’t see it until one early morning before school when nobody else was home. To say I understood it wouldn’t be fully honest. However, the detail that always captures my imagination is that I was running a few minutes behind schedule and had to fast-forward through the final five minutes. As a result, the emotional resonance was lost in favor of throwing my backpack over my shoulders and beginning the 20 minute walk to campus.
Even now, I try to imagine a scenario where that film resonated with me to the level those around me had experienced. I wouldn’t say that I hated it, but those outside of my gay friends mostly commented on how good it was despite the sex scenes. Then again, this was the age of “no homo” and gay panic jokes. Maybe it took longer for me to appreciate what I had just seen because it’s a struggle not dissimilar from modern discourse. In 2025, the world is so run with cynicism and sarcasm that it’s hard to appreciate sincerity. Had I spent too much time watching problematic representation to not notice what genuine passion looked like? Given that I wasn’t craving more traditional romantic dramas at the time, I think the answer is a lot more pronged than whether or not I could comprehend two men loving each other.
If you were forced to ask what my formative piece of gay cinema was, it was closer to Gus Van Sant’s Milk (2008). Maybe it was because the release paralleled Prop 8, but for the first time I saw a critically acclaimed film addressing topics that felt greater than unbridled passion. As dumb as it sounds, the passage in which he describes not being straight despite having straight teachers really resonated with me. Many other details stuck with me, though maybe the most was that Milk remains an aspirational figure who wanted larger positive change. No offense to Brokeback Mountain, but it’s not a film that I appreciated until I revisited years later when I had discovered a larger history of queer cinema.
With that said, it’s a title that remains crucial to understanding my generation. On the date of Heath Ledger’s untimely passing, I asked on Myspace what movies I should watch. Key among them was Brokeback Mountain, which in hindsight remains one of his greatest works in a short-lived career. It’s silly to say that anyone is fearless simply for playing a gay character, but there was a recognizable yearning in his every move. It’s hard not to recognize the struggles of a man who was having to hide a secret among polite society. It’s not a unique story, but it’s still done so perfectly that you buy into the emotions and form this deeper empathy for the characters involved. It’s a complicated view of love, and unfortunately reflects a world that’s coming more into fashion. When everyone wants to punish queer-identifying citizens, it becomes clear how hard it is to believe in a world beyond the stories we are told.
This was Ernest Borgnine’s argument when he protested against the film. Up until his death in 2012, he publicly refused to see it with the belief that it went against the vision of the cowboy he grew up knowing. Ironically, he ignores how John Ford would bully John Wayne into acting tougher to make a more convincing hero. There’s always been manipulation and, with that, a recognizable disagreement on any reassessment of the Western. Similar to Borgnine in 2005, Wayne was critical of Sergio Leone when his spaghetti westerns presented a nihilistic world of morally grey protagonists. By comparison, the idea of Brokeback Mountain presenting characters who were sensitive and vulnerable wasn’t enough for the masculine ego. It’s a point that even caught Sam Elliott in hot water when he was critical of The Power of the Dog (2021), though, unlike Borgnine, encouraged a more rational conversation than blind acceptance.
This is all to say that the stories we tell matter in the long run. Brokeback Mountain wouldn’t still be remembered if it didn’t share something genuine. It’s there in Ledger speaking up for gay rights in a more divisive time. The only way for the conversation to change was to start speaking up and try to find where the truth really came from.
As time marches on, it’s hard to say what gay cinema will look like by this time next year. While it hasn’t been a totally empty slate of options – this year saw a remake of Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet (1993) – it does feel like the risks to make mainstream art for LGBTQIA+ audiences are dwindling. Even if there’s more of a noticeable demand for these stories than there was in 2005, it does feel like the next prestige gay drama may risk holding the same reputation of a film 20 years its senior. Who knows where the discourse will lie? All that I can hope is that whoever discovers it will be able to have a better discussion than I had in 2005, where even the polite dismissals came with a sense of frustration. I’m hoping that in looking at this situation, what we’re in isn’t a parabola, but some even stranger, upward-climbing shape that is hard to notice from close-up. I’m not sure that this Brokeback Mountain rerelease will have much of a dent at the box office, but I hope it reminds people why it’s important to share these stories no matter what.
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