On Ang Lee's birthday, Brokeback thanks

Today is Ang Lee's birthday and Focus Features took the chance to wish their director happy returns by reminding their followers on Twitter of what is arguably Ang's finest film - it's certainly the one I love the most - Brokeback Mountain. Take a look at their Brokeback site and let it wash over you. Their Vice President of Global Operations, Gordon Ampel, picked his favourite scene from the film, which you can see here:

'This sequence in BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN comes very late in the movie. After learning that the love of his life, Jack Twist, has died, Ennis Del Mar (so beautifully incarnated by Heath Ledger) has come to pay his respects at the family homestead. The emotional crux of the movie has been Ennis’ internalizing his feelings, and not really expressing them – even with Jack, he would make only so much of an exception. Visiting Jack’s childhood room, gut-wrenching emotions come to the fore for Ennis – but, wordlessly, and without flashbacks to their time together or even audio echoes. It all plays out on Ennis’ heretofore stoic face, and when we see tears gathering, it is heartbreaking. The sequence builds powerfully with the nearly-silhouetted staging of the scene in the room’s closet where the full force of the love lost hits Ennis. The postscript to the sequence does include dialogue, but it’s what’s not being said that moves Ennis – and me, every time.' 

Thanks Ang and happy birthday.

My review of Contagion is now up at MovieBrit.