Brokeback Mountain

I think that Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger wanted to portray the message of Brokeback Mountain and were open to the idea of playing homosexual characters (although Ennis and Jack state they aren't "queer") but were not necessarily comfortable with their masculinity during and after the film was shot. They were obviously willing to play these parts since they read the scripts and accepted the job, but it seems as though they had to overcompensate with their other actions while filming for their own comfort and confidence. For Gyllenhaal, playing a beefed up marine in the Gulf War probably made him feel a lot better about filming intimate scenes with Ledger. Similarly, Ledger most likely felt a lot more comfortable about his sexuality (heterosexuality, to be specific) on-screen because he was having an affair off-screen. These actors probably chose these roles on purpose, but the interesting aspect about it is that all of these characters deal with the struggle of a man in every sense of the word. Rarely in these movies do the male characters interact on a full level of understanding with the female characters. So even though Brokeback strongly contrasts the other two films, they still seem to have a subtle unifying element.