I hadn't seen Brokeback Mountain before watching the DVD so I wasn't quite sure what I was getting into. As it turns out, the answer was not a whole lot. In my humble opinion it's a pretty straightforward love story, no more, no less. It does have the one thing I really dislike about all western style movies, which is it's too quiet. This is not a flaw of the film but rather a blind spot in my own viewing tastes. While I appreciate the film from an artistic standpoint I didn't find a ton of entertainment in the 130 minute running time. The one major compliment I will give Brokeback Mountain is that it ends like a freight train. The art of finishing strong has largely been lost but Ang Lee earned his Oscar here on that front.

As for the features disc one has the movie and a section called "A Groundbreaking Success" which details the controversy behind Brokeback Mountain. In my opinion the filmmakers have it right; this is only a controversy due to certain people being uncomfortable with homosexuality. If you're that person, you probably won't ever rent the DVD or read this review. If you're a person with gay friends or someone who isn't upset by same sex couples you're not going to care about this featurette because it will be preaching to the choir.

Disc two is where the rest of the features reside, the first being "Impressions from the Film." This is a collection of still photos from Brokeback Mountain. It's a very well shot and pretty film but I can't imagine going back to this option very often. I should also mention that the Collector's Edition I reviewed came with postcards from Brokeback; both nature scenes and pictures from the movie. "Music from the Mountain" is a look at the score by Gustavo Santaolalla. It's an Oscar winning score so it's somewhat interesting but you might be better off just buying the actual score and listening in your car.

"On Being a Cowboy" shows the actors learning the horses, though evidently Heath Ledger needed no help. Anne Hathaway's session was interesting because it seems as though she tried to learn with lessons beforehand but in the movie she still had a stunt double for the more technical racing scenes. To burst the final bubble, Jake didn't ride any bulls either, so essentially they learned to be cowboys in the sense of riding horses and that's about it.

"Directing from the Heart" is a little vignette dedicated to Ang Lee and it's nothing more than a fawning look at his process. He's a good director so I don't begrudge him this tribute. "From Script to Screen" looks at the short story's (originally written by Annie Proulx) adaptation. The main difference between Brokeback Mountain and other pieces of literature is that it's only 30 pages long meaning the story needed to be added on to (as opposed to a traditional 250 page book that has to be savagely chopped down to fit).

Finally, "Sharing the Story" is a 20 minute documentary on the film as a whole. Overall I'd call the features average at best. There is nothing terribly "groundbreaking" about any of them, no director's commentary, just a quiet features section to go along with a movie that generally chooses to whisper. As for my recommendation, well, if you haven't seen this and are a movie fan you should probably at least give it a rental. Then you can look forward to a day when watching or liking it doesn't say much about you other than you enjoy quiet western love stories. The fact that I don't love them isn't a political statement of any kind. My thought is this: when something offends certain segments of our population that doesn't automatically make it amazing any more than the condemnation makes it a film to avoid. Yeah, this is a good film, but not a great one, and its legacy will fade a little bit each year. In some strange way I'd call that eventual faded legacy progress.