It’s been seven years since a love story won the top Academy Award. Back then, it was a romance between a woman pretending to be a man who falls for Shakespeare. This time, it’s two men in cowboy hats.

Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain” is positioned to become the first movie with such explicit gay overtones to win best picture, although the film faces tough competition.

Also nominated are Bennett Miller’s “Capote,” the story of author Truman Capote’s years of anguish creating the true-crime novel “In Cold Blood;” Paul Haggis’ “Crash,” a drama about a huge cast of discordant characters intersecting and colliding over a chaotic 36-hour period; George Clooney’s “Good Night, and Good Luck,” the saga of newsman Edward R. Murrow’s stand against communist baiting by Sen. Joseph McCarthy; and Steven Spielberg’s “Munich,” a thriller following a Mossad hit squad targeting Palestinians implicated in the massacre of Israelis at the 1972 Olympics.

In a year of daring drama, however, “Brokeback Mountain” has resonated most widely, the top-grossing film among the best-picture lineup, a standard-bearer for gay and lesbian groups and a pop-culture sensation that has prompted endless gay-cowboy jokes.

Adapted from Annie Proulx’s short story, “Brokeback Mountain” stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as Western men swept up in a torrid summer fling while tending sheep together in 1963 Wyoming.

Declaring they are not “queer” and that what they have is only a summer thing, the two part ways, marry and have children, then are drawn back into a lusty affair they conceal from their families for years.

“It was an opportunity to tell a story that hadn’t been put on the screen,” said Ledger, a best-actor nominee for his role as Ennis del Mar, a rugged husband and father who’s helpless to explain or deny the love he feels for Gyllenhaal’s Jack Twist. “The character is so tragic. I really enjoyed how little words he had to express his battle and express his inability to love.”

“Brokeback Mountain” leads the Oscar field with eight nominations, including best director for Lee, supporting actor for Gyllenhaal, supporting actress for Michelle Williams as Ledger’s despairing wife and adapted screenplay for Larry McMurtry (“Lonesome Dove”) and Diana Ossana.

The film earned honors from key critics groups, won the Golden Globe for best drama and received top prizes from Hollywood guilds representing directors, writers and producers. “Brokeback Mountain” did lose the Screen Actors Guild competition for best overall cast performance to “Crash,” establishing the latter as a potential longshot best-picture winner on Oscar night.

But even Haggis, a best-director and screenplay nominee for “Crash” and a writing nominee the previous year for “Million Dollar Baby,” has said he expects “Brokeback Mountain” to triumph at the Oscars.

“I think it really is the year of ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ and that’s a good thing,” Haggis said. “Ang is one hell of a filmmaker, and the script, as a writer I’m so jealous, thinking: Damn, look what they did.”

Humility is a wise stance for nominees to adopt, so they do not come off as overeager or egomaniacal. Clooney, considered the supporting-actor favorite for the oil-industry thriller “Syriana” and a directing and writing nominee for “Good Night, and Good Luck,” has been publicly declaring he does not expect to win anything.