CALGARY - On Tuesday, filmmaker Ang Lee flew in from Taiwan to attend a special screening of Brokeback Mountain, the gay-themed western he filmed in Alberta last year.
He says it was a bit like attending a seance.
"It was like communicating with someone you thought was dead," says Lee.
"A few months after I left Calgary last year I felt I had closure. I felt I had gone through a proper cleansing."
Then he found himself in a theatre with local cast and crew members who'd made the film with him.
"I had my Calgary family back with me. I tried to watch the movie, but I kept having flashbacks to the incredible experience we all shared.
"The Brokeback Mountain that is up there on the screen would not have been possible without the talent and devotion of the Alberta crew and actors.
"It's their movie as much as mine."
What continues to amaze and confound Lee is how audiences react to his film.
"All the time I was directing it and editing it I never thought people would react with so much emotion.
"I never thought people would cry.
"I always hoped it would move people, but I never dreamed it would move them to tears."
Brokeback Mountain opens in Calgary on Dec. 23. Lee won the Golden Lion Award at this year's Venice Film Festival for his direction. He hopes the film will receive Oscar nominations because "that would make people curious. It would potentially open it to a much wider audience."
In the powerful drama, Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger play cowboys whose fondest memory in the secret relationship they share for 20 years is the summer they spent together herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain.
"Heath and Jake's characters always dreamed of returning to Brokeback. That's what we were all doing Tuesday night. We were going back to the place that gave us all so many special memories."
Lee says his wife insists the reason he gets nostalgic when he talks about Alberta is that he had too much fun making the movie.
"It's true. We did have so much fun. I have wanted to make Brokeback Mountain for years. It was a passion for me as intense as the love between the cowboys in the film, but there were days I felt my Calgary people were more excited about what we were doing than I was."
Lee says it is his dream to return to Alberta to make another film.
"It wouldn't be a western. I'd like to do a movie about hockey," says Lee, who became an avid Flames fan during his sojourn in Calgary.
"I keep toying with so many ideas.
"I know I'll be back."
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