We stayed until the very last credit of Brokeback Mountain just to hear Rufus Wainwright sing "The Maker Makes" and to savor the the emotion of a very powerful film.

Hepcat thought the film captured that part of the country (Wyoming) like nothing he’s ever seen. The slowed-down time, the scale of the landscape, the affect of the people. It reminded him of Avedon’s photographic masterpiece, "West."

I loved the pace of the film. Especially in the beginning. It really put me into a very western mood. The lack of language, the physicality of the sheep rancher’s life, the brutal weather, the connection with the natural world…

It made the early sexual scenes all the more powerful. I was overtaken with the sex scenes and found them incredibly arousing. Sex between Innis and Jack in the tent that first time was just incredible – I’d never been as turned on by images of sex between men.

Of course seeing those me – Jake and Heath. It was, for me, a stimulating voyeurism that took my breath away.

Heath Leger as Innis is unspeakably wonderful – it is a performance where even a twitch could be construed as over-acting. Everything is communicated in the most subtle, phsyical of ways. I found myself watching his face, his posture, his walk, his eyes.

There’s so much rage within him and masked-over passion. When he bangs his head against the wall after that first summer in Brokeback Mountain – it is believably the only way this character knows how to express inner pain.

Innis’ relationship with his daughters is heartfelt and vivid – even though it is largely unspoken.

Jake G. is an amazing and, for me, a more recognizable character. He has passion and ambition within him. He wants to love openly and his desire to come out and live on a ranch with the man he loves is powerful and moving.

The women too were amazing. Alma’s silent suffering is brutal. She’s a compelling person locked into a tough rural life in the middle of nowhere. Ultimately, she leaves him. But she never stops loving Innis or feeling betrayed by his lies.

For me, the scenes after Brokeback Mountain didn’t have the power of those summer scenes – but it did convey and even create the longing to see those two men back together again. The lives they were both living away from one another made you long for the passion of those scenes n the tent. But nothing in the rest of the film ever measured up to the beginning – nor did anything in the lives of those men ever measure up.

The film set out to do some very difficult things: portray the lives of people who are largely inarticulate and withheld. As a portrait of longing for the unattainable, so  much of the film had to have a kind of flatness in order to convey what was missing.

In the end, Brokeback is film about absence – of words, of love, of sex, of truth. Like a negative space, the characters inhabit a world that lacks even the most basic human needs: to o be truthful about our selves and to live our lives expressing the passion that glows within.