“Brokeback Mountain” is one of our finest love stories, of the ilk in which there are no happy endings — “Romeo + Juliet,” “Lolita,” or “Titanic.” Instead of a family feud or an impossible distance in years or a disaster at sea, the “Brokeback” stars are crossed because they are both men.

Without giving us caricature to laugh at or nerve-wracking explicit sex at which to cringe, the beautiful and heartbreaking “Brokeback Mountain” exposes how weird we humans truly are by our reactions to a love story.

However, this is not a “gay cowboy movie.” Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) are the kinds of guys who would punch you in the mouth for daring to call them that. (And anyway, they’re sheepherders.) They fell for their wives, too. Choosing to fall in love with each other would be about as smart as letting a hungry bear grab them. The consequences are about the same too.

An intriguing concept alone does not a good movie make (take a look at “A Day Without a Mexican,” for instance). There is a powerful trio behind this story’s telling: Larry McMurtry, with his savvy about the West, Annie Proulx, grabbing the dark and meaningful center of a time and place and Taiwanese director Ang Lee, skilled with the power of love fighting against the power of repression.

Gustavo Santaolalla’s guitar and string score immediately evokes the sweeping vistas and breaking hearts of this film without being saccharine. And those wilderness locations — the color, the weather, the contrast with the dead dry small towns — demand a gigantic screen.

As for the actors, Gyllenhaal’s superb work in “Donnie Darko” looks shallow in comparison to his performance as Twist. Ledger rises well above his previous pabulum — the less he lets out, the more he channels Clint Eastwood or Brad Pitt. Though the supporting cast members absolutely nail their roles, none of them upstage the leads — testimony to their talent and to the pulsating heart of the movie, that it is a tale about the two men. They are as fixated on each other, and as unable to pull away from each other, as a binary star system.

Most refreshingly, without the staple of lingering exploitative “love” scenes, this is a romance that knows its audience doesn’t have to be hit over the head with golden-hued soft-porn flesh shots.

Twist and Del Mar do not savor the jaws of attraction that have clamped on them. In fact, they do their best to fight back. Still, everyone knows what’s coming from Twist’s first furtive glance at Del Mar in a side-view truck mirror. When the two first grab at each other, half the audience at Maine Coast Mall Cinema in Ellsworth, Maine where I saw the movie snickered. Even George Bush, when asked what he thought of it, faltered and giggled.

We are as resistant to the idea of this impossible love — and as completely fixated by it — as the leads. Because if Twist and Del Mar can herd sheep, ride bulls, drink rotgut whisky without flinching and raise beautiful children and they can’t help but be brained by an impossible love, no one can.

Ashley O’Dell reviews movies that aren’t in the theater anymore.