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    Never Quitting ‘Brokeback Mountain’

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    Now 20 years old, this love story about two sheepherders is being rereleased in theaters. Here’s a look at what it meant to pop culture, then and now.“I wish I knew how to quit you,” says a frustrated Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) to his secret lover Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) in a now emblematic scene from Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain,” the celebrated gay-themed drama based on Annie Proulx’s 1997 short story.The film was originally released in December 2005, but is back in theaters this June for a 20th-annivesary Pride Month reissue.Jack’s sorrowful line came to synthesize the doomed love affair between the two rugged men for whom the majestic landscapes of Wyoming became a sacred romantic hide-out — the only place they were free to express desire and tenderness for each other.But that line, and the notion of two men who embody an archetype of American masculinity falling for each other, was both parodied and memed in pop culture — often reduced to “the gay cowboy movie” — even while the film received critical raves and Oscar nominations (eight, including best picture, a prize it lost to the movie “Crash”). Arriving at a political turning point in the United States, “Brokeback Mountain” struck a chord far beyond cinephile circles.For the film critic and author Alonso Duralde, who wrote a book about queer cinema history called “Hollywood Pride,” the film was a watershed moment for representation in mainstream Hollywood. It was distributed by Focus Features, the indie outfit of Universal Pictures, with a revered director and up-and-coming stars, which meant it could potentially have a wider reach and impact.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Barbra Streisand on the Duets That Define Her: ‘I Like Drama’

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      With a new album due next week that pairs her with Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Laufey, Sam Smith and more, the singer looks back at her prized collaborations.To Barbra Streisand, a duet isn’t just a song. “It’s a dramatic process,” she said. “It’s wondering who is this guy in the song? Who is this girl? What’s happening with them?”Figuring that out plays straight into Streisand’s core identity as an artist. “I’m an actress first,” she added. “I like drama.”Small wonder she has performed character-driven duets so often, so creatively and with such commercial success. In October 1963, following the release of Streisand’s debut album, Judy Garland invited her to appear in an episode of her TV show; their joint performance all but anointed the younger as her vocal heir.In the decades since, many of her highest-charting songs have been duets, starting in 1978 with Neil Diamond on their death-of-a-love ballad, “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” followed the next year by her diva-off with Donna Summer on “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough).” Both shot straight to No. 1. In the early 1980s, she scored two Top 10 Billboard hits with Barry Gibb, chased by a dalliance with Bryan AdamsIn 2014, Streisand issued an entire album of double billings titled “Partners,” which teamed her with stars from the quick (John Mayer on “Come Rain or Come Shine”) to the dead (Elvis Presley via a vocal sample from the singer’s 1956 recording of “Love Me Tender”). Both that album, and its follow-up, “Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway,” scaled Billboard’s peak.Next week, Streisand, 83, will release a sequel, “The Secret of Life: Partners, Volume Two,” featuring contemporaries of different musical sensibilities, like Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan, as well as younger voices including Hozier and Sam Smith.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      In a New Documentary, the Deaf Actress Marlee Matlin Talks About Prejudice

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      In a new documentary, the actress talks about the prejudice and loneliness she faced after becoming the rare Hollywood star who is deaf.Actors in documentaries about their own lives rarely — perhaps never — speak with the kind of candor that Marlee Matlin brings to Shoshannah Stern’s new film “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore” (in theaters). This kind of project all too often results in a cagey puff piece, lots of warmed-over memories accented by one mildly surprising revelation, which ensures the movie will make headlines.Not this film. From the start, Matlin speaks with an unvarnished frankness about the loneliness and prejudice she encountered when she burst into public consciousness in “Children of a Lesser God,” for which she won the best actress Oscar in 1987. For 35 years, she was the only deaf performer with an Academy Award — a record finally broken in 2022, when Troy Kotsur won for “CODA,” in which he co-starred with Matlin. Now, she says, she isn’t alone anymore.But the path to this point was littered with frustrations in a world that still treats deaf people as second-class citizens. Matlin talks about how solitary she often felt, set apart not just from the hearing world but at times from the deaf one, too. She speaks, with nuance but also pain, of her relationship with her “Children of a Lesser God” co-star William Hurt, who was 16 years older and, she says, abusive at times. (Hurt died in 2022. In 2009, he issued a public apology “for any pain I caused.”) She also addresses the clear anti-deaf bias that surfaces in the news media — demonstrated, pointedly, by archival clips of interviewers saying offensive things — and how it shaped her addiction struggles as well as the way she presented herself in the years following her Oscar win.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More