Newsweek's David Ansen concludes his review of Brokeback Mountain thusly:
"Brokeback Mountain is in no rush. Its emotional impact builds slowly, its rhythms in tune with the countryside -- the rugged grandeur of the mountains; the arid, bleak vistas of backwater Western towns, where the rooms seem as cramped as the sky is vast. Lee's movie isn't a Western, but it has much to say about the mindscape of the American West, where the myth of rugged individualism works only for those who don't break the rules, and love can suffocate in the wide-open spaces."