BlueWizard goes to the movies: BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN and KING KONG — Page 6

I just finished reading the short story, and it's a helluva good read, with gorgeous language and precious descriptions of the characters' inner longings which just can't be fully captured on film. (Though I did find that the experience of seeing the film enhanced my reading of Proulx's story).

As beautiful as the film was, I wish Ang Lee made the scene with Ennis discovering the shirt clearer: watching the movie, I understood that the denim shirt was what Jack wore on Brokeback Mountain, and hence Ennis was projecting his sense of loss onto the shirt, etc.; but it was only from reading the short story that I found out that the second shirt inside the denim one was Ennis', the one he supposedly "lost" during that first summer.

I wish Lee made that clearer; the moment reveals how Jack was conscious of his love for Ennis, since he took his shirt. It's a completely sexless gesture, whereas in the film we never get the full impression that their relationship is based on anything other than sex. The shirt symbolism is also the source of the story's romance (which is rather downplayed on film), because of the allusion to Arisophanes' creation myth in Plato's Symposium: two halves become one.

---

Updated On: 12/22/05 at 02:03 AM

I read Annie Proulx's short story months before I saw the film, and I have to say that I am ecstatic at how Ang Lee, Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana took such good care to preserve Proulx's prose and transform it into cinematic images. I love the film version of BBM and plan to see it many more times. Heath Ledger gives an amazing performance and so does Jake Gyllenhaal, who, in my opinion, is being shafted by the critics and the award giving bodies. As IFC critic, Matt Singer, said, with whom I agree:

"Still, 'Brokeback' is a powerful film, largely during the portion where Ennis and Jack, married and miserable, pine away for the relationship they really want but cannot reclaim. You've pointed out Ledger's fine performance as Ennis, but I think Jake Gyllenhaal is being unfairly maligned in what is arguably the tougher role. Heath gets to play the smolder and longing, calling upon decades of iconographic cowboy cool, while Jake has the unglamorous task of playing desperate guy who doesn't know when to quit (or, as he attests later, doesn't know how to quit).

But Gyllenhaal also ages far more convincingly than Ledger does, and he shines in the couple's climactic confrontation where, with a rather symbolic mountain in the background (the mountain is breaking their backs, you see!) he finally calls Ennis on his poor life choices. As the two part, Lee cuts to the pair back on Brokeback decades earlier, where Jack was fresh-faced and full of life. Lee cuts back to the pair in the present, to a close-up on Gyllenhaal's face, now darker and sadder and full of the weight of a lifetime of regret. The actor shows an entire lifetime in two shots and one cut without the benefit of dialogue."

Also, I would have loved to have seen one more scene of physical intimacy between Ennis and Jack before they parted, just to demonstrate that their passion never diminished through the course of their surreptitious 20-year love affair. As originally written by Annie Proulx, a day or two before Ennis and Jack's painful final meeting:

"Without getting up [Jack] threw deadwood on the fire, the sparks flying up with their truths and lies, a few hot points of fire landing on their hands and faces, not for the first time, and they rolled down into the dirt. One thing never changed: the brilliant charge of their infrequent couplings was darkened by the sense of time flying, never enough time, never enough."

It's just such a moving film. I can't get enough of it.

Updated On: 12/22/05 at 02:18 AM

That's actually my favorite passage in the short story, and I tear up everytime I read it, and when I see the scene played out onscreen:

"What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger.

They had stood that way for a long time in front of the fire, its burning tossing ruddy chunks of light, the shadow of their bodies a single column against the rock. The minutes ticked by from the round watch in Ennis’s pocket, from the sticks in the fire settling into coals. Stars bit through the wavy heat layers above the fire. Ennis’s breath came slow and quiet, he hummed, rocked a little in the sparklight, and Jack leaned against the steady heartbeat, the vibrations of the humming like faint electricity and, standing, he fell into sleep that was not sleep but something else drowsy and tranced until Ennis, dredging up a rusty but still usable phrase from the childhood time before his mother died, said, “Time to hit the hay, cowboy. I got a go. Come on, you’re sleepin on your feet like a horse,” and gave Jack a shake, a push, and went off in the darkness. Jack heard his spurs tremble as he mounted, the words “See you tomorrow,” and the horse’s shuddering snort, grind of hoof on stone.

Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see or feel that it was Jack he held. And maybe, he thought, they’d never got much farther than that. Let be, let be."

i thought it was painfully obvious that jack took the shirt, first off, by the look he gave ennis when ennis first said "i cannot believe i left my shirt up on the mountain" as they say goodbye the first time.

ennis is wearing that shirt during a good amount of the first part of the movie and in the trailer, promo pictures, etc.

i liked that ang lee didn't force anything on the viewer and gently revealed facets of the characters or other events.

---

yeah, i went to a site and saw that. i just know from experience that moviegoing drops off a bit just before the holiday. in the case of brokeback, i think it might be a similar case as happened with rent - the core audience rushed out to see it as soon as it came out in the major cities.

once it opens wider, i think the numbers will continue to be impressive for a movie of its content and appeal.

---

oh it's pretty clear. i remember the way jack gave a "knowing look" in the movie when ennis discovered he was missing his shirt. check it out in the link below - the fourth video on the right.
watch the fourth video on the right

---

Updated On: 12/22/05 at 09:29 AM

I had just assumed that the denim was a jacket and that Jack wore both items during his brawl with Ennis.

the thing that struck me about the box office, though, was that the other thirteen of the top fifteen ALL went up - these two were the only ones that dropped. It just stood out to me, that's all.

I can't say for KING KONG, but most likely BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN's drop was affected by the NYC transit strike, since such a large portion of its screens are in the city.

---

Updated On: 12/22/05 at 12:09 PM

Is that you, RobbO? Cute photo.

I was thinking about the shirts today; those are the shirts they wore the night they got together, right? Minor detail. I thought of it as a projection of the notion of protecting the other, as well. Right on!

---

One of the most heartbreaking scenes for me was when Jack leaves Brokeback for the first time, and Ennis has a physical reaction to it in the alley.

The whole cast is flawless, but Ledger is so amazing in this movie...

ok, i have a confession to make. the first time i saw the movie, i thought the blood-stained shirts were the clothes that jack was wearing when he died. totally stupid, i know ... but i just didn't put the clues together in my head. when my partner told me what was really going on with the shirts, he was very sweet about it and didn't laugh at me TOO much

---

Updated On: 12/23/05 at 11:19 AM

just for the record, cturtle, i'm laughing AT you, not WITH you.

---

i was thinking of opening a BROKEBACK store at the mall where couples can come in and pick out shirts, have a fight that draws blood, and then go home happy with matching blood-stained shirts. kind of a new take on the BUILD-A-BEAR store.

---