Is Brokeback Mountain really the story we need now?

There’s much to love about this new stage adaptation but surely it’s time for bolder queer narratives, says Jason Okundaye

- Jason Okundaye

WHEN the Ang Lee adaptation of Annie Proulx’s short story Brokeback Mountain premiered in 2005, it wasn’t necessarily radical cinema but it was provocative. Paul Mendez, the acclaimed author of Rainbow Milk, remembers it coming at an opportune moment “from a UK perspective — two years after the repealing of Section 28 — it was the right film at the right time to demystify queer desire and critique the constraints gay men have faced”.

Since then audiences have had greater insights into the lives and loves of gay men: the popular films Moonlight and Call Me by Your Name, adapted from stage and literature respectively, have delved into masculine desire, while the Channel 4 series It’s A Sin documented the Aids crisis in Britain and its devastation of gay male communities.