Reduced to caricature prior to its release, and now a new form of derisive shorthand for bigots everywhere, Brokeback Mountain remains a powerful and acutely affecting film, and not nearly for the reasons many out to wage their own political crusade ascribe to it. Yes, it is a love story centering around two homosexual cowboys. But its observational prowess is nearly unrivaled in all of American film of the past several years not directed by Alexander Payne. Brokeback Mountain is also a keen rendering of the corrosive nature of self-denial. Dreams of all types are buried and traded in every day across the world, but Brokeback Mountain shows — in moving, modest and melancholic fashion — just what it means to deny something that is a part of you to your very core.

Opening in Wyoming, the story throws together two itinerant ranch hands, Ennis Del Mar (H eath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), who find work under Joe Aguirre (Randy Quaid) herding sheep in the summer of 1963. Both rugged individualists, the pair forge an unexpected bond and tumble into a lusty physical clinch, but part ways at the end of the job. Engaged to Alma (Michelle Williams), Ennis gets married; Jack also weds, tying the knot and having kids with outgoing, well-to-do rodeo queen Lureen (Anne Hathaway). A couple years later they reconnect, though, and enter into a protracted, if limited, affair consisting of stolen fishing trips and camping vacations.

Director Ang Lee, working from an adaptation of Annie Proulx’s short story of the same name and using Gustavo Santaolalla’s haunting score as an aural highlighter, locates the unseen social forces and the limits of personal nerve that inform his characters’ behavior. The fierce insight and clench-jawed genius of Ledger’s performance in particular lies in the manner in which he never allows himself to even entertain the possibility of honest happiness.

Presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen that preserves the aspect ratio of the film’s original theatrical exhibition, Brokeback Mountain comes housed in an Amray case, and features English and French language Dolby digital 5.1 audio tracks alongside optional English, French and Spanish subtitles. Four single-digit-minute featurettes comprise the disc’s bonus materials, looking in cursory fashion at the film’s character development, the modus operandi of director Lee, the particulars of Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana’s adaptation and the production itself. Of this quartet, the “script to screen” featurette is probably the most interesting, but everything about this release clearly augurs a more comprehensive, double-disc special edition DVD somewhere down the line. To that end, hedge your collecting plans accordingly. A (Movie) C- (Disc)