Love is a force of nature

Andy of towleroad got his hands on a scan of a poster for the much awaited movie Brokeback Mountain, directed by Ang Lee and based on the short story by Annie Proulx. (You probably already know this by now, but it’s about two cowboys in love, and stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway play their wives.) And when all this waiting is over (as of now the release date is Dec. 2005), I really hope the movie doesn’t water down the very moving original story. One of my favorite passages comes when the two men are reunited:

Late in the afternoon, thunder growling, that same old green pickup rolled in and he saw Jack get out of the truck, beat-up Resistol tilted back. A hot jolt scalded Ennis and he was out on the landing pulling the door closed behind him. Jack took the stairs two and two. They seized each other by the shoulders, hugged mightily, squeezing the breath out of each other, saying, son of a bitch, son of a bitch, then, and easily as the right key turns the lock tumblers, their mouths came together, and hard, Jack’s big teeth bringing blood, his hat falling to the floor, stubble rasping, wet saliva welling, and the door opening and Alma looking out for a few seconds at Ennis’s straining shoulders and shutting the door again and still they clinched, pressing chest and groin and thigh and leg together, treading on each other’s toes until they pulled apart to breathe and Ennis, not big on endearments, said what he said to his horses and daughters, little darlin.

The tag line on the movie poster is “Love is a force of nature.” How very true.

[Addendum (Aug. 23): I should’ve posted about this sooner, but definitely go see The Malcontent for a sneak peek that aired on Entertainment Tonight. The best line of those clips: “I wish I knew how to quit you.” Here it is in context in the short story:]

“Try this one,” said Jack, “and I’ll say it just one time. Tell you what, we could a had a good life together, a fuckin real good life. You wouldn’t do it, Ennis, so what we got now is Brokeback Mountain. Everthing built on that. It’s all we got, boy, fuckin all, so I hope you know that if you don’t never know the rest. Count the damn few times we been together in twenty years. Measure the fuckin short leash you keep me on, then ask me about Mexico and then tell me you’ll kill me for needin it and not hardly never gettin it. You got no fuckin idea how bad it gets. I’m not you. I can’t make it on a couple a high-altitude fucks once or twice a year. You’re too much for me, Ennis, you son of a whoreson bitch. I wish I knew how to quit you.”