Ang Lee films bear such scant resemblance to each other that it is hard to believe that they were fashioned by the same man. Brokeback Mountain is as far removed from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as it is possible to get. There is not a single splashy effect in this bony western, yet it is easily the most affecting cinema the Asian auteur has made.

Set in the hills of Wyoming in 1963, Brokeback Mountain tells the story of two young drifters who are hired to tend sheep in frigid isolation. Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal are chalk-and-cheese loners, and the Oscar for Best Actor is within reach of both.

Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal) and Ennis Del Mar (Ledger) barely speak a word for weeks on end. The camaraderie is as basic as their duties. One of them sleeps with the sheep, the other fries the beans. The entertainment is a mouth organ and a slug of whisky.

A freezing night sparks the guilty drama. Jack invites Ennis to share his tent. He places Ennis’s hand on his crotch and they squirm in frantic intimacy. The square-jawed Ennis wants to forget the sex ever happened. He aims to get married in November.

“That was a one-shot thing,” he mumbles. He narrows his eyes, lowers his Stetson, and trots back to the sheep. This is an unlikely cue for an epic Hollywood love story. But romances are rarely this touching, and westerns rarely this believable. The salty melodrama is how the two ranch hands fail to cope with their taboo feelings. When summer breaks, the two men are forced to part like strangers. The denial is heartbreaking.

What makes the split so painful is the way the film plays with real fire: the evasion, the fear of discovery, and rampant homophobia. Randy Quaid is terrific as the sour local boss who accidentally sees far more of the boys than he is prepared to stomach.

The miserable business of scraping a wage pushes Ennis and Jack to distant states. Years pass. Yet the romance somehow survives, mostly as a long-distance itch the two men can scratch only when they meet for “fishing trips” on Brokeback Mountain.

Repression and jealousy gnaw the marital knots they tie with Michelle Williams (as Ledger’s bitter, knowing wife) and Anne Hathaway (Gyllenhaal’s wealthy Texas squeeze). Ledger’s need to keep up appearances and Gyllenhaal’s desire to come clean, are the poisonous sticking points.

Lee wrings pure melancholy out of what might have been. The performances are magnetic. The framing scenes — Williams silently crying into her cup of coffee as Ledger packs for another male-only camping trip; Gyllenhaal seeking paid solace in the dingy streets of El Paso — are immaculately shot.

What makes the film so fresh is not the modest story, but the combination of ingredients: the period, the people, the language, the big weather. Every secret inch squeaks with authenticity. Lee uses his perspective as an “outsider” to paint the most impressive and bleak portrait of postwar rural life in the American West I’ve ever seen.

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