Brokeback Mountain: HD DVD And DVD Combo Format Optical Disc Review

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Title: Brokeback Mountain: HD DVD And DVD Combo Format

DVD Region: One (NTSC)

HD DVD Region: Not Applicable

Genre: Drama

Stars: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Linda Cardellini, Anna Farris, Anne Hathaway, Michelle Williams, and Randy Quaid

Writers: Larry McMurtry, and Diana Ossana

Based Upon The Story By: Anne Proulx

Director: Ang Lee

Feature length: 2 hours and 15 minutes

Extras: Directing From The Heart: Ang Lee, From Script To Screen: Interviews With Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, Sharing The Story: The Making Of Brokeback Mountain, On Being A Cowboy Featurette, Music From The Mountains Featurette, A Groundbreaking Success Featurette, Impressions From The Film

HD DVD Languages: English and French Language Dolby Digital 5.1 Plus Surround Sound

DVD Languages: English DTS Digital 5.1 Theatrical Surround Sound, English and French Language Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound, and Spanish Language Dolby Surround Sound

Subtitles: English Subtitles For The Deaf And Hard Of Hearing and Spanish and French Language Subtitles

Packaging: Elite Red HD Case

Chapter Stops: 20

HD DVD Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1 Plus Surround Sound

DVD Sound: DTS Digital 5.1 Theatrical Surround Sound, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound, and Dolby Surround Sound

Year of Theatrical Release: 2005/HD DVD And DVD Combo Format Release: 2007

Theatrical Distributor: Focus Features

Home Video Distributor: Universal Studios Home Entertainment

MPAA Rating: R

Reviewer: Mark A. Rivera

Back in 1994 when I was still earning my Masters Degree in Literature and Writing, I remember taking a graduate class entitled The Modern American Novel Since World War II and among the books and short stories we read was Legends Of The Fall in part because the feature film version was being released that same semester. I vaguely remember the actual story as it compares to the feature film, but I do remember wondering how a novelette could be expanded into a feature film of epic proportions. When Brokeback Mountain was still playing in theaters I remember seeing the novelette the film was based on and the same thought I had about Legends Of The Fall crossed my mind. The fact is as the screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana state in the interview that is included among the extra value features on the DVD (10:54), taking the dialogue alone from the novelette would only fill up about fifty pages of the actual script. The writers had to interpret what was in the text of the story regardless of how vague it might be and expand upon it while still be true to their perceived intentions of the author. This is an extremely difficult challenge since like anything creative undertaking, films, screenplays, and fiction are extremely subjective. The only person who can truly state what was at the heart of the story is the author and sometimes even they are not completely sure what they meant because a large part of writing is intuitive. When writing my graduate thesis on the connection between the sci-fi genre and the western genre, as a personal exercise I stuck the laserdisc of Once Upon A Time In The West into the player and transcribed the dialogue word for word along with a short description of the scenes. Text alone I found that there is approximately 50 pages of dialogue in Once Upon A Time In The West with the rest of the film time basically crafted into a beautiful symphony of Composer Ennio Morricone’s beautiful score and Sergio Leone’s brilliant eye for telling a story visually with widescreen vistas and close-ups. The film has a running length of 165 minutes and since a single page of a screenplay is roughly equal to a minute of screen time, that means that over 90 minutes of “Once Upon A Time In The West” is at least in part free of major and supporting character dialogue. Yet if you are a fan of the film as I am, the ratio between dialogue and visual storytelling combined with a musical score to punctuate the scenes just seems to fly by easily without notice.

This takes me back to the writing of Brokeback Mountain, which is both quite internal in terms of the characters star-crossed situations and yet almost epic if not definitely ambitious as we watch approximately two decades in the lives of two cowboys, who because of societal stigma, pressure, and danger, literally cannot be who they want to be in their personal lives and instead have taken on wives and kids because they are keeping up appearances and essentially are forced to live a lie. Emotionally however the men and their respective wives and families begin to fall apart because how can a person continually pretend to be something they are not constantly. Intuition and subtle behaviors begin to manifest itself to such a point that ultimately the lives of all involved could become ruined. To this day both gay men and women are perhaps the most discriminated group of individuals worldwide because of stigma and a lack of understanding as well as outright bigotry. Granted there are some things people might have trouble seeing or accepting, but as a straight man I think gay men and women are in some ways forced to adapt an heir of apathy for the world around them because society is still not sophisticated or mature enough to recognize that just as the rights of a human being to be treated equally regardless of race or creed still now somehow these rights have not yet been extended to protect the right to express one’s sexuality and preference or orientation and be afforded the same privileges other people receive. I still think gay men and women are perhaps the most discriminated against nation of individuals living in the United States and abroad today.

So not having read the book personally, I felt that the writers who adapted it really brought home the tragedy of the situation for the two men, their wives, and families. This makes Brokeback Mountain an important film that should be seen at least once by everyone and it also makes Brokeback Mountain quite depressing in some ways. I still am unsure how to interpret the last scene in the film, but I do feel a sense of empathy for all the characters and find the losses to be terrible.

Universal Studios Home Entertainment has re-released Brokeback Mountain on both DVD and as a combo format HD DVD-30 dual layered disc on one side and a dual layered DVD-9 on the other. This disc was released roughly a month ahead of the one year anniversary of the film’s three Oscar® wins that included Best Director for Ang Lee. The disc comes with additional bonus materials as well as the bonus materials included on the previous DVD release. Usually Universal’s combo format HD DVD releases have the majority of the extra value features on the standard definition side of the disc, but for Brokeback Mountain, all of the extra value materials are on the HD DVD side with the DVD side containing only one feature that is also accessible on the HD DVD side. The extra value materials are encoded in MPEG-2 with only the new featurettes presented in a 16 by 9 aspect ratio, but coupled with the fact that this film is over two hours encoded using VC1 and that no quality of the film’s feature presentation has been lost is a testament to what is possible for HD DVD authoring and also because the new featurettes show 16 by 9 clips from the film in MPEG-2, it gives the user an almost direct comparison between the two methods of digital encoding without having to flip the disc over. For HD DVD anyway, I found the VC1 image quality to be superior to the high definition MPEG-2 shots from the film in the new featurettes. The vistas and detail are far sharper without sacrificing the film’s somewhat wintry tone as well as providing ample space for the high resolution Dolby Digital 5.1 Plus Surround Soundtracks encoded onto the HD DVD side of the disc. If nothing else, I also feel that this disc shows that Universal is improving upon it’s authoring techniques for HD DVD/DVD hybrid discs and I hope the studios future releases in this combo format will build upon the positive direction taken here.

Brokeback Mountain is presented in a widescreen 1080p resolution where available high definition image with a choice of English or French Language Dolby Digital 5.1 Plus Surround Soundtracks and English Subtitles For The Deaf And Hearing Impaired as well as French Language Subtitles encoded onto the HD DVD side as options. Ironically you can switch soundtracks directly using the remote without activating the seamless interactive menu technology that enables the viewer to watch the film and access menu choices without interrupting the movie’s progress, but you can’t switch subtitle options using the subtitle button on the remote alone. However on the standard definition DVD side, you can switch between subtitles using the remote, but you cannot switch soundtracks without interrupting the film to access the menu and make your choice.

The standard definition DVD side of Brokeback Mountain is presented in an anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) aspect ratio complete with a clear English and French Language Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Soundtrack as well as English Subtitles for the Deaf and Hearing impaired and French and Spanish Language Subtitles. New to the standard definition DVD release is the addition of a Spanish Language Dolby Surround Soundtrack and an English DTS Digital 5.1 Theatrical Surround Sound option too. The original DVD release extra features are all on the HD DVD side and are presented in a (1.33:1) aspect ratio. These features include the interview with the screenwriters, there is a short profile on Ang Lee (7:28), a short look at the realities of being a cowboy and taking on the role for the film (5:45), and a making of special that aired on the Logo network (20:28).

The new extra value features include a featurette on the composing of the film’s score (11:18), a retrospective discussion of the film’s mainstream success and what it has meant for the general movie going public as a whole and not just the gay community (17:13) and a motion image gallery (5:44). All of these features are presented in 16 by 9 widescreen. The only feature available in 16 by 9 enhanced widescreen on the standard definition DVD side is the retrospective discussion featurette. The enhanced menus that including favorite scene book marking and so forth work beautifully and employ both images and the soundtrack from the film too. The main menu on the standard definition side is animated while the subsequent menus are all standard interactive still frames that are easy to navigate. The only caveat I have with this release is the exclusion of the film’s theatrical trailer especially since it is discussed in the retrospective featurette. It should have been included for reference purposes at least.

While not a film I could watch over and over again in part because I found it as a whole to be depressing, I think Brokeback Mountain: HD DVD And DVD Combo Format is worth the upgrade if you own an HD DVD player and it is available now at retailers on and offline courtesy of Universal Studios Home Entertainment.

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