Brokeback Mountain (2005). Courtesy Focus Features.
Listen to how much effort it takes Ennis Del Mar to get a sentence out. Heath Ledger keeps his words low and close, sometimes barely clearing his mouth. In Brokeback Mountain, an ordinary conversation can feel like a negotiation over how much of himself he is willing to reveal. As the years pass, that voice has to carry more than the dialogue explains.
Ang Lee's 2005 film begins with Ennis and Jack Twist, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, taking a sheep-herding job in the summer of 1963. The relationship that starts on the mountain continues across two decades. Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana adapted Annie Proulx's short story, giving the men lives and families that keep moving while their time together arrives in brief, separated stretches.
The passage of time had a precise vocal design. In testimony published by Focus Features, dialect coach Joy Ellison explained that she and Lee divided the story into three periods, each with its own version of the characters' voices. The older voice was lower and slower. Because scenes were filmed out of sequence, Ledger and Gyllenhaal could move from an older voice to a younger one during the same shooting day.
Lee also described Ennis's reserve as something rooted in fear. He and Ledger discussed a childhood experience of violence and a sexuality that Ennis's surroundings did not permit him to express. His guarded manner could turn aggressive. That account gives a concrete basis to the performance: the character has learned ways to protect himself that also make closeness difficult.
Gyllenhaal gives Jack more room to imagine a shared future. Their conversations become painful because the two men are trying to discuss different possibilities. Jack can make a proposal; Ennis immediately sees the danger attached to it. The film allows that danger to be real without making the cost of Ennis's refusals disappear. Someone still has to leave, wait and arrange another meeting.
The wide landscapes give their time together an openness that the conversations cannot sustain. Back among jobs, marriages and family obligations, a missed opportunity does not need a dramatic announcement. It becomes another interval in which they live apart. Ledger's changing voice helps those intervals register: Ennis grows older, but finding a way to say what he wants remains hard. The years are audible even when he has very little to say.
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