The new Ang Lee film, "Brokeback Mountain," is a love story that starts in
1963 and never ends. The first scene is a master class in the dusty and the
taciturn, with gusts of wind doing all the talking. A cowboy stands against
a wall in Signal, Wyoming, his hat tipped down as if he were falling
asleep. Another fellow, barely more than a kid, turns up in a coughing old
truck and joins the waiting game; both are in search of a job. There is
something wired and wary in their silence, and the entire passage can be
read not only as an echo of "Once Upon a Time in the West," whose opening
hummed with a similar suspense, but also as an unimaginable change of tune.
Sergio Leone's men were waiting for a train; these boys are falling in
love.