I want to mention two things about this movie. First, how brilliant it is. And second, how beautiful the blu ray transfer looks.

1. It's been six years since Brokeback Mountain hit theaters, and though I've watched the film countless times since, if I had only seen it once, I can promise you I would never forget it. It is a storyline that you dream about, relate to, cry over, reflect upon, write about, and become haunted by. I watch a lot of movies and enjoy plenty of them, but never has a film inspired me to analyze its story so deeply and to read books on it by film critics and touched fans. The fourth time I watched it at the theater, I took a notebook and filled pages with notes on the beauty of the poetic transitions and the development of characters. But even during my 20th viewing (or however many times it has been now) I discovered new richness and depth in the story.

Without going on and on, I suppose I should just say that I love this movie. But before I talk about the blu ray, I just want to point out that this is not strictly a "gay" movie any more than Titanic or Romeo and Juliet are straight movies. Love is a force of nature, as the tag-line says, and it is not bound to one sexuality or another. The movie is, simply put, a human movie about human life, desire, hate, mistakes, and many other universal emotions that make up us all. I recommend you see it and after it's over, I recommend you see it again. Like Shakespeare, the story is endlessly multidimensional and deserves multiple viewings to truly grasp it all. Obviously Annie Proulx's original short story is also required reading (I would suggest reading it before watching, but either way is fine) as it contains endless brilliance as well. The overall talent involved with this project is stunning.

But let's move on and talk about the blu ray.

2. The first thing I should mention is that this "100th Anniversary" new packaging from Universal Studios doesn't mean that there are any new features or remastered transfers that are different from the already available Brokeback Mountain [Blu-ray]. It does come in combo-pack format, however, which includes a DVD and Digital Copy of the film if that interests you.

As far as the picture quality goes, I feel pretty confident when I say that I was blown away by it. I saw the movie in theaters, on DVD, on TV, and just about anywhere else I could find it. On Blu Ray, it was a whole new experience. You can read labels on soup cans, feel the richness of the grass, and see foam in the spring waters. Without question, this is a scenic movie. It DESERVES to be seen in 1080p. If you have the DVD, great, it's pretty good too, but this is so worth the upgrade. The picture is so beautiful, sometimes I just pop it in the player on mute and let it run as a "screensaver."

The audio is also a joy. Gustavo Santaolalla's score is a masterpiece in itself and all the more beautiful in lossless DTS 5.1. Not to mention Heath Ledger's character is a bit of the shy type who mumbles as much as he speaks. I never had a problem understanding him, but the speech is noticeably clearer now for anybody who found that to be an issue.

As far as the special features go, they are just repeats from the DVD release and admittedly not very exciting. Worth watching, sure, but not especially noteworthy. In some ways I think that's a good thing, though. As much as I would love Ang Lee to do a director's commentary, this type of movie will effect people in different ways and consequently I don't know that I would feel comfortable if the artists behind it revealed too much. That can easily frame the story in a certain way and ruin it for those who are touched by it in other ways. As I said, this is a universally human story, and it's a great movie for fans and scholars to discuss and compare experiences, but when the film-makers themselves start talking it...it can potentially ruin things.

OVERALL: A+++ movie that will, without question, go into the Love Story Hall of Fame where it will stand next to other classics like Pride and Prejudice, Romeo and Juliet, Wuthering Heights, and so many other touching classics, gay and striaght alike. As far as the Blu Ray, it also deserves an "A" rating for its beautiful HD transfer that is everything a fan could ask for and more. I highly recommend purchasing it.

And, if you are like the many who can't stop thinking about the movie and want to dive deeper into the literary genius of the story, here are some books that inspired me: Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay, Reading Brokeback Mountain: Essays on the Story and the Film, On Brokeback Mountain: Meditations about Masculinity, Fear, and Love in the Story and the Film, The Brokeback Book: From Story to Cultural Phenomenon, and Beyond Brokeback: The Impact of a Film.

Brokeback Mountain is the tale of two cowboys, Ennis and Jack, who ranch sheep together one summer in the 1960's. One cold night, the two men huddle together in a tent to keep warm, and an explosive physical relationship erupts. They both agree that the night was a "one-shot deal," but somehow the two men keep finding one another again, throughout the summer. After the ranching gig ends, both men nonchalantly tell each other goodbye, but the separation is painful for both. Cut to four years later - the men have gone their separate ways, married, had kids. But when they happen to see each other again, old feelings almost violently assert themselves, leading to a 20-year relationship that is by turns passionate, furtive, and tortured.

First of all, performances by Heath Ledger (Ennis) and Jake Gyllenhaal (Jack) are unbelievable. I cannot adequately describe the performance work in this film. Ledger, who I'd only seen in fairly superficial roles - teen movies, not-so-great romantic comedies - totally transforms himself for this role. Tight-lipped, sun-baked, and shamed, his Ennis provides the tension in the film that powers the plot through to its final, saddening conclusion. Gyllenhaal plays Jack, the more honest, self-accepting of the two men, with an emotion that is strong enough to be real but restrained enough to epitomize the tough guy image of a Western. Both lend a haunting quality to the various ways in which Ennis and Jack try to live their lives, denied of the one thing they truly want.

At the end of the day, Brokeback Mountain is a love story, the tale of two people who love each other but can't be together. This is not untrod territory in Hollywood. However, hanging this familiar storyline on a less-than-mainstream social topic for the movies - homosexuality - proves to be very powerful. The intensity of the two men's feelings for one another, and the delayed gratification that is the bedrock of their relationship, bring their experience into sharp focus for the viewer. Beautiful scenes of mountainous countryside and a strong, simple acoustic guitar accompaniment add to the poignancy. I just cannot recommend it highly enough. It will haunt you. It will make you think. It will move you.

Fair warning - there is one brief sex scene between the two primary characters. If you don't warm to that idea, I recommend getting the film on DVD and fast-forwarding through that part. It is not worth missing the movie over.

This review might contain spoilers.

This movie is brilliant. The first time I saw Brokeback Mountain, I left the movie theater in a dazed state, trying to digest what I just had seen. Wondering through some crowded streets of NYC on a cold, windy winter night, I never felt more alone. I hurried home. Many movies have left me excited, intrigued and sad. But none have left me as emotionally devastated as Brokeback has. It's as if the movie insinuated itself around my very soul and wrapped its grief around my unsuspecting heart - leaving it heartbroken ever since. The beauty of this movie is that it makes the characters seem so real, so live and their pain so raw, that the sorrow that permeates the story - hinted at first in the display of the most beautiful desolated sceneries, together with a melancholic music score, sneaks in your head, and unknowingly but quite forcefully takes hold of your body and soul and never seems to let them go.

A few weeks later, after countless sleepless nights, unable to shake myself off this stupor, I saw BBM again. This time I left feeling better because it became clear to me that what I had just witnessed was one of the most beautiful love stories ever told. It doesn't matter for me that it happened to be between 2 men. Because there is something so refreshing, so innocent, so lovely about how the story unfolds, that it literally turned this quite jaded, a bit cynical New Yorker, inside out. But I gather that this movie is not meant for everyone. Considering the state of our world today, how we are brought up to fend for ourselves and how we are taught to never let our guards down, we shield our fragile selves from any hint of perceived emotional threats. And we shut down. But I guarantee 100% that if only you could keep the cynicism at bay for the length of this movie, it will transform you. Like I mention before, this movie really makes you hurt, a heartbreaking SOB of a love story that just kills you, but it can be life changing.

Both Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger are phenomenal. Period. This movie wouldn't work if either one of them didn't give his heart and soul completely. What a remarkable screen performance these two give - a performance dug directly from the heart. Amazing. Some criticize that the characters don't develop enough rapport before that first scene in the tent. Nonsense. Haven't you ever heard of something called instant chemistry? And both Heath L. and Jake G. deliver throughout the movie. I bow my head to these guys. Of course the movie wouldn't work either without the great, touching performances from Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway and Roberta Maxwell.

This was a wonderful work from Ang Lee. To portray this movie in such a delicate, sensitive way merits all ovations it gets. During an interview, Ang Lee said that when casting, he decided to go after young and innocent. That choice has really paid off here because in a way that's why the movie works: because to find love when one is so young, so innocent, that is the purest kind of love. When tragedy hits later on the movie, and somehow we kind of expect that from the start, the only thing that remains out of this now flawed, resentful relationship is a sense of love. But Jack and Ennis' souls have been irremediably broken.

Alas, this is the price these doomed individuals pay for living a life denied and full of lies. The soul dies first before physical death occurs. We see it happen in Jack's case, his soul dying, so touchingly captured in his mournful, dead blank eyes at their last fateful meeting when he watches Ennis' truck speed away. He bitterly tells Ennis: "We could've had a good life together...but YOU didn't want it...so Brokeback is all we got" finally letting all his resentment spill out on their most unsatisfactory relationship. To which Ennis replies, accusingly, angrily: "It's because of you Jack...that I'm like this...I'm nothing...I'm nowhere" before collapsing to the ground as if the weight of this impossible affair suddenly becomes too heavy a burden for him to carry. Jack rushes back to comfort him, and they hug mightily, desperately clinging to one another for they know that they have reached some crossroads in their hearts - their relationship hanging by a thread, they cannot help but watch it slip away.

To his part, Ennis fares no better. When we last see him, alone in that empty, desolated trailer, surveying those shirts that he now tenderly guards, he swears love to a man that no longer exists but in his dreams and memories - a late cry of acknowledgment for what he always had felt but never dared to verbally express during those long 20 years. And like the emptiness of his trailer, Ennis' soul, so long tormented about a crime he saw as a child and so terrified by the notion that the love of his life was another man, cries in despair for a love forever lost, and it is now destined to wither away in solitary confinement.

Thus, the tragedy and paradox of Brokeback Mountain: Love can help save a man from destroying a life that could have been but a man cannot save himself if love is left buried and hidden in the deepest corner of the human heart. Something has to give. So Jack and Ennis: if only I should come to feel a love like that, God help me, but I for one will not hold back. Thank you for showing me the reason why.