Studying Brokeback Mountain

Upon its release in 2005, Brokeback Mountain becamea major pop cultural event. Striking at the zeitgeist sensibility, the film remindedaudiences of cinema's power to dramatize our most powerful emotions and dilemmas andof its capacity to transcend the screen and become part of wider cultural debate. Amodern take on a traditional genre, Brokeback Mountain stunnedaudiences with its powerfully told, tragic love story. The film also underscored thelongevity of the Western as a narrative form, despite its fight for relevance inAmerican cinema. Studying Brokeback Mountain compares the filmto the short story written by Annie Proulx and considers its subsequent developmentinto a feature film adaptation. The book contextualizes the film within the genre ofthe Western and cites the narrative and thematic conventions thatBrokeback Mountain reinvigorates and complicates. The film isalso situated within director Ang Lee's entire body of work, taking apart itstextual qualities, its application of sound, its images, and its narrativestructure. The volume then considers the film's reception and the range of responsesit ellicited from critics, both celebratory and damning.