Brokeback Mountain (2005)

In Best Director-winning Ang Lee's landmark love story and favored 2005 Best Picture nominee:

• the poignant love story between two married bi-sexual Wyoming cowboys: ranch-hand Ennis Del Mar (Best Actor-nominated Heath Ledger) and rodeo cowboy Jack Twist (Best Supporting Actor-nominated Jake Gyllenhaal), who fell in love years earlier in 1963
• their first meeting as an innocently exuberant skinny-dip into a pond
• their initial confusion about their attraction over a campfire
• at first, Ennis rebuffed Jack's daring attempt to kiss him and to mutually touch each other, but then returned sheepishly with his hat in hand and accepted their first kiss - before their first sexual experience (anal intercourse) together, an under-one-minute sexual encounter in a shared sleeping bag in a two-man tent
• Jack's awkward declaration of his true love for Ennis: ("The truth is... sometimes I miss you so much I can hardly stand it...")
• Ennis' chilling story about the cruel murder of a suspected gay cowboy
• their eventually strained marriages -- Ennis to fragile, waifish Alma (Best Supporting Actress-nominated Michelle Williams) and Jack to tomboyish rodeo queen Lureen Newsome (Anne Hathaway)
• the sequence of Ennis' taunt to Jack at the end of a fishing trip: "I'm goin' a tell you this one time, Jack f--kin' Twist, and I ain't foolin'. What I don't know - all them THINGS that I don't know, I'd get you KILLED if I come to know them! I ain't jokin'!"; the sexually-frustrated Jack responded back with an ultimatum speech to Ennis: ("Well, try this one and I'll say it just once....Tell ya what. We coulda had a good life together! F--kin' real good life! Had us a place of our own. But you didn't want it, Ennis! So what we got now is Brokeback Mountain! Everything's built on that! That's ALL we got, boy! F--kin' ALL! So, I hope you know that. If you don't never know the rest! You count the damn few times that we have been together in nearly 20 years, and you measure the short f--kin' leash you keep me on, then, you ask me 'bout Mexico! And you tell me you'll KILL me for needin' somethin' that I don't hardly NEVER get! YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW BAD IT GETS! And I'm not you, I can't make it on a couple of high-altitude f--ks once or twice a year! YOU ARE TOO MUCH FOR ME, ENNIS! You son of a whoreson bitch! I wish I knew how to quit you!") and Ennis' sobbed response: ("Well, why don't you? Why don't you just let me be, huh? It's because of you, Jack, that I'm like this! I ain't got nothin', and I'm, I'm nowhere... Get the f--k off me!...Sorry I can't stand much anymore, Jack"); they struggled with each other and ended up hugging
• much later in the film during their reunion four years later, the two hugged each other tightly -- Ennis, nervously looking around, then forcefully grabbed Jack and pushed him into a secluded spot by stairs where they kissed hungrily - while Ennis' wife Alma accidentally spied on their embracing passion from above and turned away

Secretive Passionate Reunion Kiss - Seen by Alma

• the scene of Ennis visiting Jack's parents some time after Jack's death, and his first discovery of the blood-stained shirts in Jack's childhood bedroom closet. The shirts belonged to himself and ex-lover Jack from when they fought together years earlier on Brokeback Mountain (Jack had died while changing a tire that exploded, although Ennis imagined it as a gay-bashing incident in a field) - Ennis held the intertwined shirts to his face and breathed in their scent
• the melodramatic ending, in which Ennis once again saw their two old shirts (hanging in the back of a closet in the trailer of his father). The two shirts were both together on one hanger, intertwined - Jack's blood-stained shirt was tucked inside of Ennis's - he also saw a postcard of Brokeback Mountain tacked next to the shirts and straightened it - he tearfully and regretfully cried about their forbidden homosexual love affair: ("Jack, I swear...")

The Melodramatic Conclusion