Brokeback Mountain
2005 · Film · Ang Lee
The one that made straight America finally sit down and watch.
Where to watch Brokeback Mountain
Streaming rights for this one move around. Check your usual services, and we will list them here as soon as we can confirm.
Streaming options last verified September 15, 2026
What is Brokeback Mountain about?
Two ranch hands, Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, take a summer job herding sheep in 1963 Wyoming and begin a relationship that neither of them will name. Over the next twenty years they marry women, raise children, and meet for fishing trips that fool nobody, while Ennis's fear of what happens to men like them keeps hardening into a life neither man wanted. Ang Lee directs from Annie Proulx's short story, and the film's real subject is not the romance but the closet: what it costs, who else it damages, and how a man can be so afraid of a life that he refuses it while it is still on offer. Heath Ledger's performance is mostly silence and a locked jaw. Jake Gyllenhaal plays the one who keeps hoping. The shirts at the end do more damage than most horror films manage in two hours, and the film's cultural weight, in 2005, was enormous.
It's about the cost of the closet, not the romance of it. That last scene with the shirts does more damage than any horror film.