lonesome cowboys; Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger, writes John Powers, break all the rules of the Hollywood Western in Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain.

Byline: John Powers

About halfway through Brokeback Mountain, a heartbreaking romance based on the acclaimed story by Annie Proulx, there's a kiss destined to become a cinematic landmark. What makes it unforgettable isn't simply that the ardent lovers are both men. Or even that they're cowboys. It's that they're cowboys played by two rising young stars, Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger.

As recently as ten years ago nobody in Hollywood would have dared bankroll such a project, a love story that not only explodes cliches about gay men but radically challenges the mythology of our most iconic genre, the Western-this is the first fresh take on the subject since Unforgiven. And it speaks eloquently of today's cultural fluidity that this groundbreaking movie was directed by Ang Lee, the soft-spoken, t'ai chi-practicing Taiwanese who's seemingly unafraid to try his hand at anything-the period romance of Sense and Sensibility, the 1970s suburban craziness of The Ice Storm, the martial-arts poetry of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Lee's work is defined by its fascination with powerful emotion. In Brokeback Mountain, he tells me, the key was to keep things simple and put faith in the complementary chemistry of the actors.

"Jake and Heath are very different," he says. "Heath is a kind of natural cowboy or ranch hand-he naturally carries the whole Western thing. Jake's aura is more city-like, more knowing-less elegiac."

This is clear the instant you meet them. Slouchy and low-key, Ledger looks as if he could walk into a Wild West saloon and feel right at home; though affable, especially when talking about having a baby with girlfriend Michelle Williams, he has the deadpan manner and wary eyes of a thirties-movie gunslinger. It's this quality that led Hollywood to typecast the Australian actor in period action flicks like The Patriot, A Knight's Tale, and The Four Feathers. He took to these parts gamely, though he aspired to be Daniel Day-Lewis more than Kevin Costner. "I always wanted to get better," he says. "But I never went to acting school. I never had an ...