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Brokeback Mountain is the star-crossed lovers' story of Ennis del Mar (Ledger) and Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal), two young men who meet in 1963 while on a sheepherding job on the titular mountain, somewhere in Wyoming. The film documents their meeting and the complex relationship over the 20 years that follow.

The two men get to know each other during brief periods at their main camp on Brokeback Mountain, gradually revealing details about their upbringing and outlooks. Ennis, at first the camp tender, soon switches jobs with Jack, riding out daily to where the sheep are pastured. One night, after the two share a bottle of whiskey, he stays at the main camp, sleeping next to the campfire while Jack sleeps in the tent. The fire dies and Jack orders the noisily shivering Ennis into the tent. After a while he takes Ennis' hand, moving it toward his crotch. Following brief resistance from the reserved and cautious Ennis, who then hastily moves Jack into position, the men couple passionately. For the remainder of the brief summer their sexual and emotional relationship deepens.

After the two part ways at the end of their job, Ennis marries his fiancée, Alma Beers (Williams) and starts a family. Jack moves to Texas where he meets Lureen Newsome (Hathaway), whom he subsequently marries.
Four years later, Ennis receives a postcard from Jack saying that he will soon be in town and hopes Ennis will want to see him again. The two men reunite and find their passion is as strong as ever. Jack broaches the subject of creating a life together operating a small ranch. Ennis, haunted by a childhood memory of the torture and murder of a gay man in his hometown, fears that such an arrangement can only end in tragedy. He is also unwilling to leave his family. Unable to be open about their relationship, Ennis and Jack settle for infrequent meetings on camping trips in the mountains.
As the years pass, Ennis's marriage deteriorates. Alma divorces him and takes custody of their children. Jack hopes that Ennis's divorce will allow them to live together at last, but Ennis refuses to move away from his daughters. In scenes of their occasional trips together, Jack's expresses frustration over Ennis' refusal to consider a life together. As the two prepare to part at the end of one trip, the frustrations and fears lead to angry confrontation. Jack admits to visiting Mexico (where Ennis knows men can find homosexual prostitutes) and Ennis threatens him. "What I don't know," he says, "all them things that I don't know would get you killed if I should come to know them."

Jack responds with equal anger over their situation: "We could a had a good life together, a fuckin real good life but you didn't want it, Ennis, so what we got now... is Brokeback Mountain!" he says, and then utters the words that sum up his longing and frustration: "I wish I knew how to quit you."
Several months after that last meeting, Ennis learns that Jack has died. In a strained telephone conversation, Jack's wife Lureen tells Ennis that Jack's death was accidental, the result of an exploding tire, but a montage showing Jack being beaten in the face with a tire iron demonstrates Ennis's conviction that Jack was murdered. Lureen tells Ennis that Jack wished to have his ashes scattered on Brokeback Mountain, and suggests contacting his parents.

Ennis visits Jack's parents, offering to take Jack's ashes to Brokeback Mountain, but Jack's father insists that Jack's remains be buried in the family plot. Jack's mother is more welcoming, and invites Ennis to go upstairs to Jack's boyhood bedroom. There, Ennis discovers two old shirts hidden in the back of the closet. The bloodstained shirts, with Jack's enclosing Ennis' shirt on the same hanger, are the ones the two men were wearing on their last day on Brokeback Mountain in 1963.
At the end of the movie, Ennis opens his own closet to reveal that he has hung the two shirts, this time with his surrounding Jack's, inside the door with a postcard of Brokeback Mountain. With tears in his eyes, Ennis mutters, "Jack, I swear..." before closing the closet door.