If you can't fix it you've got to stand it.

I just saw one of the best movies of 2005, and I can't help but sing my praises. Are you ready for Marlboro men who love men? Is Brokeback Mountain a groundbreaking gay cowboy movie? To say so is an insult to the filmmaker, writers and actors who shared their art to make this short story by E. Annie Proulx enter the Hollywood mainstream possible. It is just as any movies we have seen that deal with the mysterious ways of forbidden love (West Side Story; Romeo and Juliet); it just so happen that the star-crossed lovers are men.

Ennis del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), a pair of 19-year-old cowboys, met in Wyoming ranch country in 1963 to herd sheep in the Brokeback Mountain for the summer. These two rough-mannered, rough-spoken ranch hands have never heard of the term gay; men who would mightily resist a gay lifestyle or even the label homosexual. Theirs is a relationship that unfolded in the beautiful scenery of the countryside wilderness; it is a stifle cry to the vast emptiness of the blue sky over the mountains. Great love stories are about hurdling obstacles, and this one has a lot to spare: a lonely passion that has no place in their world.

As their campfire dies one biting cold night, which drove them to huddle together inside the tent, a sudden spark between Ennis and Jack flared into an undying flame: an intimacy that is explosive, graphic, candid and unapologetic. The morning after that fateful encounter, Ennis insisted, "I'm no queer," to which Jack added, "Me neither. A one-shot thing. Nobody's business but ours." But the passion did not die and that promise was forever forgotten.

Their blissful and liberating life in the mountain was cut short by an impending blizzard, forcing them to end their summer employment and separate ways. Their farewell is a simple "See you around," though you could clearly see them both torn up. Unaware that they had stumbled upon the greatest love their lives, they went off to the rest of their lives: Ennis marrying his sweetheart Alma (Michelle Williams), and Jack, moving to Texas and falling into a marriage with Lureen (Anne Hathaway), a rodeo rider with a well-to-do family; they thought that what happened on Brokeback Mountain was over.

Four years had passed and Ennis, who had settled in Wyoming, received a postcard from Jack saying the he would come for a visit. The instant their eyes set on each other, the suspended passion and longing exploded into a spontaneous kiss. That meeting began their one or twice "fishing trips" in the countryside alone together on which there's no fish caught. After a few stolen days of re-living their idyllic summer, they go back to hiding their love behind shaky façades of heterosexual domestic life numb.

Jack, being the showier character, the livelier wire, and who is more self-aware and self-accepting, urges that they forsake their marriages, set up ranch together and settle down. Ennis, the taciturn who only speaks however, haunted by a childhood memory of seeing a mutilated body of a rancher tortured and beaten to death for living with another man, dissuades the idea out of fear and shame, "This thing gets hold of us at the wrong time and wrong place and we're dead."

We read and watch millions of love stories; they come and go, but this one stays with you - not because it's homosexual, but because Ennis and Jack's story is so full of life and longing, and true romance.

Great story this may be, it could never reach its grandeur without the wonderful direction of Ang Lee, the superb adaptation of Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, the awesome cinematography of Rodrigo Prieto and the exceptional performances of the actors.

I've seen Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in previous films, but never had I thought of them as great actors - hunky heartthrobs, maybe - but this movie changed my mind: they made this angst-ridden love story tangible. Ledger as Ennis gave a powerful performance of a laconic Western man: the pain, the rage, his sense of longing and loss are for real. The disappointment of Gyllenhaal's soft and outspoken Jack is forever registered in his sad, expectant eyes. I love William's glum look, especially the look on her face when she discovered the affair (Oops! I gave out that one didn't I?) Hathaway made her character's turn into a robotic shell after years with Jack so convincingly that you (the audience) can't even tell if she has any idea about the relationship between her husband and his fishing buddy.

Are you ready for Marlboro men who love men? I am. After getting past that giggling fit on their first kiss I actually gushed over the intensity of their love's passion.