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Published On: Dec 30, 2005 10:26 AM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Dec 30, 2005 10:26 AM
Brokeback Mountain
I'm going to talk a lot about plot points, so don't
read if you don't want to know. K?
Going in, I was a tad afraid because I had heard so
much about the film, and just assumed that I would suffer from
anticippointment (cf. Rick). However, it did in fact live up to my anticipation,
so there is at least that.
Let's first deal with the filmic aspects of the, well, film. Have I ever not liked an Ang Lee film? Let's rattle off the ones I have seen, shall we? The Wedding Banquet (cute, not too deep, but well done), Sense and Sensibility (I mean, really, do I need to say more?), The Ice Storm (some of the best performances from that group of actors), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (amazingly shot, amazingly touching...a tour de force, really), Hulk (I actually didn't mind this movie at all, frankly. I thought it was pretty moving for an action movie). I won't get into an oeuvre analysis here, but can't we say that he is one of the most versatile, effective, and inspiring filmmakers of his generation? He has an incredible eye, a ridiculous knack for getting stellar performances from actors who we might not think would be able, a freakish ability to transcend cultural and historical contexts, and an uncanny ability to meld artistic and commercial concerns (who would have thought Tiger would be one of the most successful foreign language films ever? You could argue that Sense ushered in the Austen-mania of the past decade. Even most critics acknowledged that Hulk was a seriously artsy action movie). Seriously, it's way past due to give him props.
In terms of this film, he is delicate in his direction. There is nothing ever gratuitous--in terms of sex, violence, and most importantly emotion. After the credits started rolling, Rick said, "I'm dead inside" because he didn't cry during the film. I didn't either. Now, this was a tad disappointing really, but I think I realize that I didn't cry because I wasn't emotionally affected; it's that Lee wasn't going for sentimental melodrama here. He wasn't trying to make us cry, as so many movies aim to do.
I used the term delicate because I think he lets the story and the actors propel the film forward: there's very little that's flashy here. The pace is spot on, as is the framing of shots. There are great directing moments--for two, the flashback to that first summer together as Jack and Ennis part for what turns out to be the final time and the flash of the mountain (so quick it's almost subliminal) as Ennis looks at the postcard in the final scene. Overall though, Lee is not there, and rightly so.
Anyway, the film is just beautiful--as languid in its shots of the country as Ennis's steps, but never lingering too long, never boring. The music is haunting (it figures that Lee would hire an Argentine to find the perfect C/W score).
And then there are the actors. To say that this is a career-altering performance for Ledger is almost understatement. Much has been made of the clenched way Ennis speaks, how he has to force words out of him, but I was more astonished by Ledger's physical interpretation of Ennis: he looks like he literally has the world on his shoulders, constantly hunched and shuffling. He is the Brokeback Mountain. Gyllenhaal is all beauty and all energy and is great. I thought he did such a good job (especially toward the end) of conveying the desire Jack has for Ennis. Also (and this probably is credit to Lee, but I'll give it to Gyllenhaal), do you remember the scene where Jack waits shirtless for Ennis in the tent and then holds him tenderly? Almost imperceptibly, Jack whispers over and over "It's all right" as he gently rocks Ennis. It was just beautiful and the voice and expression from Gyllenhall were perfect. Again, who knew Michelle Williams could act this well? There's a scene after she realizes just how much Ennis loves Jack that just focuses on her face, and she just nails it. Even Anne Hathaway, especially in her final scene with her little eruptions of noise as she too comes to realize the extent of Ennis and Jack's relationship, is great.
Some random comments before I get to analysis:
Let's first deal with the filmic aspects of the, well, film. Have I ever not liked an Ang Lee film? Let's rattle off the ones I have seen, shall we? The Wedding Banquet (cute, not too deep, but well done), Sense and Sensibility (I mean, really, do I need to say more?), The Ice Storm (some of the best performances from that group of actors), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (amazingly shot, amazingly touching...a tour de force, really), Hulk (I actually didn't mind this movie at all, frankly. I thought it was pretty moving for an action movie). I won't get into an oeuvre analysis here, but can't we say that he is one of the most versatile, effective, and inspiring filmmakers of his generation? He has an incredible eye, a ridiculous knack for getting stellar performances from actors who we might not think would be able, a freakish ability to transcend cultural and historical contexts, and an uncanny ability to meld artistic and commercial concerns (who would have thought Tiger would be one of the most successful foreign language films ever? You could argue that Sense ushered in the Austen-mania of the past decade. Even most critics acknowledged that Hulk was a seriously artsy action movie). Seriously, it's way past due to give him props.
In terms of this film, he is delicate in his direction. There is nothing ever gratuitous--in terms of sex, violence, and most importantly emotion. After the credits started rolling, Rick said, "I'm dead inside" because he didn't cry during the film. I didn't either. Now, this was a tad disappointing really, but I think I realize that I didn't cry because I wasn't emotionally affected; it's that Lee wasn't going for sentimental melodrama here. He wasn't trying to make us cry, as so many movies aim to do.
I used the term delicate because I think he lets the story and the actors propel the film forward: there's very little that's flashy here. The pace is spot on, as is the framing of shots. There are great directing moments--for two, the flashback to that first summer together as Jack and Ennis part for what turns out to be the final time and the flash of the mountain (so quick it's almost subliminal) as Ennis looks at the postcard in the final scene. Overall though, Lee is not there, and rightly so.
Anyway, the film is just beautiful--as languid in its shots of the country as Ennis's steps, but never lingering too long, never boring. The music is haunting (it figures that Lee would hire an Argentine to find the perfect C/W score).
And then there are the actors. To say that this is a career-altering performance for Ledger is almost understatement. Much has been made of the clenched way Ennis speaks, how he has to force words out of him, but I was more astonished by Ledger's physical interpretation of Ennis: he looks like he literally has the world on his shoulders, constantly hunched and shuffling. He is the Brokeback Mountain. Gyllenhaal is all beauty and all energy and is great. I thought he did such a good job (especially toward the end) of conveying the desire Jack has for Ennis. Also (and this probably is credit to Lee, but I'll give it to Gyllenhaal), do you remember the scene where Jack waits shirtless for Ennis in the tent and then holds him tenderly? Almost imperceptibly, Jack whispers over and over "It's all right" as he gently rocks Ennis. It was just beautiful and the voice and expression from Gyllenhall were perfect. Again, who knew Michelle Williams could act this well? There's a scene after she realizes just how much Ennis loves Jack that just focuses on her face, and she just nails it. Even Anne Hathaway, especially in her final scene with her little eruptions of noise as she too comes to realize the extent of Ennis and Jack's relationship, is great.
Some random comments before I get to analysis:
• I was worried going in about the intimate
scenes, because the ones I had seen involved a lot of tussling...violent.
However, in context they make so much sense, and are supplemented with ones of
real tenderness, including the motel scene.
• One quibble was with the literalness of the
closet. I don't know who to blame here (Proulx?
McMurtry and Ossana?
Lee?). We get not one, but two closets, in fact. It's like Sedgwick was a co-writer. I mean, really, it's
fine. It just sort of distracted me. However, I'm probably alone with this with
my other closet theorists.
And some questions:
And some questions:
• Did Ennis scatter Jack's ashes on
Brokeback? It seemed weird that Jack's mom had the bag ready for him (with some
ashes already in there?) and to have Jack's dad be all insistent as he left
about burying him in the family plot if he wasn't going to. Further, right after
that scene, there's a shot of a car in the night amid mountains. Answer that for
me.
• Were we to feel betrayed by Jack's
dalliances with others, particularly with Randall Malone? I don't think so,
because the film recuperates him a bit by having the scene in his closet with
Ennis: Ennis was the one he truly loved and the others were just stand-ins.
However, with his father telling Ennis that he planned on coming up with Randall
Malone to tend to the ranch made me wonder a bit.
So, how do we read the film? First, usually I am not all that interested in authorial intention, but I happened to read an interview with Proulx that intrigued me, because she seemed insistent on the importance of class in the story, which I started to really get a sense of throughout the film. In many ways, class drives this film: they have to work on Brokeback because they cannot make a living elsewhere; they cannot be together because they have financial responsibilities; their final argument is because of Ennis's inability to nail down a good job (which is then turned into the final heart-wrenching twist at the end with his daughter where he corrects his mistake). The West as constructed as mythology is dead or dying in this film--there are no romantic ranches; it is rough, harsh, filled with podunk towns where people scrape by (I mean, Alma has a job in the mid-60s!). Ennis tries to hold onto the dream of being a true Western cowboy, but cannot--both in terms of class and in terms of sexual identity. Jack is transformed from a rodeo man to a salesman, only able to assert his identity in a traditional way by ripping the head off his father-in-law and in a non-traditional way by having sex with men.
In the interview, Proulx also emphasized the importance of "place and history" in her writing, and obviously that ties into how we deal with the issue of sexuality. Briefly, Sam argues how Jack and Ennis cannot be gay because they had no gay subject position to hold onto at that place and time, which is of course correct. In comments, Laurie argues that not only are Jack and Ennis necessarily closeted, but that, because it is placed in the past, the entire film is somewhat closeted since by not making the film contemporary, Lee et al. allows viewers to universalize the love story or to even just get swept away by the scenery.
I'm not so sure about that. First, I think the place and history are important because it does indeed allow us some distance and makes the violence (both of their love and against them) more believable. Remember that the story was published a year before Matthew Shepard died; I wonder how easily it would have been for mainstream America to believe that such violence was possible in their enlightened society before Shepard's death. Also, Wyoming serves as this sort of freeing yet incredibly harsh landscape, perfectly suited for the kind of relationship Jack and Ennis have.
So, I don't think that this story can really be universalized, because in so many ways it is particular. OK, I guess it fits into the genre of star-crossed lovers, but one question: can it be a love story if the word love is never spoken? I mean, again, this perhaps can be chalked up to heavyhandedness but I think it's significant that Jack and Ennis never say they love each other. Yes, perhaps they cannot, but maybe then that inability/unwillingness to latch onto a gay identity leads us to a word that is spoken in the movie: queer. Placing contemporary labels on historical situations is always fun, but there are ways that I think this works a bit. Jack and particularly Ennis don't want to be gay, if that means being a part of community of similarly inclined people or articulating that you prefer men over women--Jack and Ennis talk a lot about their wives and children to each other. They just want this relationship in addition to all of the straight stuff they have to do. They would seem to rather want to redefine what a straight man can do than become a gay man, and that's where it seems they are a bit queer to me. Jack in particular reminds me of the men on the "down low" you see on Oprah: men who insist they are straight but have sex with other men (oh and Ennis doing Alma doggie style...nice touch). I don't know. They are certainly not gay and certainly not straight, as, especially 40 years ago, we would typically conceive of it.
I want to end with another question: what does Ennis's last line mean? After his daughter leaves, and he has agreed to attend her wedding, he looks at the postcard of Brokeback and the shirts (perfectly fitting together...I loved that detail) and says, "Jack...I swear." At least three different readings...meaning three different endings to that sentence:
So, how do we read the film? First, usually I am not all that interested in authorial intention, but I happened to read an interview with Proulx that intrigued me, because she seemed insistent on the importance of class in the story, which I started to really get a sense of throughout the film. In many ways, class drives this film: they have to work on Brokeback because they cannot make a living elsewhere; they cannot be together because they have financial responsibilities; their final argument is because of Ennis's inability to nail down a good job (which is then turned into the final heart-wrenching twist at the end with his daughter where he corrects his mistake). The West as constructed as mythology is dead or dying in this film--there are no romantic ranches; it is rough, harsh, filled with podunk towns where people scrape by (I mean, Alma has a job in the mid-60s!). Ennis tries to hold onto the dream of being a true Western cowboy, but cannot--both in terms of class and in terms of sexual identity. Jack is transformed from a rodeo man to a salesman, only able to assert his identity in a traditional way by ripping the head off his father-in-law and in a non-traditional way by having sex with men.
In the interview, Proulx also emphasized the importance of "place and history" in her writing, and obviously that ties into how we deal with the issue of sexuality. Briefly, Sam argues how Jack and Ennis cannot be gay because they had no gay subject position to hold onto at that place and time, which is of course correct. In comments, Laurie argues that not only are Jack and Ennis necessarily closeted, but that, because it is placed in the past, the entire film is somewhat closeted since by not making the film contemporary, Lee et al. allows viewers to universalize the love story or to even just get swept away by the scenery.
I'm not so sure about that. First, I think the place and history are important because it does indeed allow us some distance and makes the violence (both of their love and against them) more believable. Remember that the story was published a year before Matthew Shepard died; I wonder how easily it would have been for mainstream America to believe that such violence was possible in their enlightened society before Shepard's death. Also, Wyoming serves as this sort of freeing yet incredibly harsh landscape, perfectly suited for the kind of relationship Jack and Ennis have.
So, I don't think that this story can really be universalized, because in so many ways it is particular. OK, I guess it fits into the genre of star-crossed lovers, but one question: can it be a love story if the word love is never spoken? I mean, again, this perhaps can be chalked up to heavyhandedness but I think it's significant that Jack and Ennis never say they love each other. Yes, perhaps they cannot, but maybe then that inability/unwillingness to latch onto a gay identity leads us to a word that is spoken in the movie: queer. Placing contemporary labels on historical situations is always fun, but there are ways that I think this works a bit. Jack and particularly Ennis don't want to be gay, if that means being a part of community of similarly inclined people or articulating that you prefer men over women--Jack and Ennis talk a lot about their wives and children to each other. They just want this relationship in addition to all of the straight stuff they have to do. They would seem to rather want to redefine what a straight man can do than become a gay man, and that's where it seems they are a bit queer to me. Jack in particular reminds me of the men on the "down low" you see on Oprah: men who insist they are straight but have sex with other men (oh and Ennis doing Alma doggie style...nice touch). I don't know. They are certainly not gay and certainly not straight, as, especially 40 years ago, we would typically conceive of it.
I want to end with another question: what does Ennis's last line mean? After his daughter leaves, and he has agreed to attend her wedding, he looks at the postcard of Brokeback and the shirts (perfectly fitting together...I loved that detail) and says, "Jack...I swear." At least three different readings...meaning three different endings to that sentence:
1. Jack, I swear . . . I cannot believe that you
are gone.
2. Jack, I swear . . . those were good
times.
3. Jack, I swear . . . my eternal love to
you.
Obviously I want the last one, but given the context, doesn't that make sense? His daughter is going to get married, and he turns to the man he should have (in the fantasy world Jack envisions) married (note also that his shrine to Jack lacks a picture of him--it is all about the clothes intertwined and the mountain...Jack lives in his memory). And that last shot, looking out the window of Ennis's trailer at the flat prairie, indicating that this will be Ennis's life without Jack--flat, certainly not as interesting and beautiful as Brokeback--that was so good. OK, I will stop now. Thoughts?
PS: check out Dave's top ten list inspired by the film.
Obviously I want the last one, but given the context, doesn't that make sense? His daughter is going to get married, and he turns to the man he should have (in the fantasy world Jack envisions) married (note also that his shrine to Jack lacks a picture of him--it is all about the clothes intertwined and the mountain...Jack lives in his memory). And that last shot, looking out the window of Ennis's trailer at the flat prairie, indicating that this will be Ennis's life without Jack--flat, certainly not as interesting and beautiful as Brokeback--that was so good. OK, I will stop now. Thoughts?
PS: check out Dave's top ten list inspired by the film.
Posted: Thu - December 29, 2005 at 04:06 PM |