Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
TOTW 15/07: Short story or movie, which one do you prefer?
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Artiste on December 05, 2007, 07:49:23 pm ---Guess we have no more freedom to be gay men here?
--- End quote ---
Don't be sad, Artiste. That's not what I said.
What I said was, there is already a thread devoted to the anti-gay question. Anyone interested can discuss that question there. This thread is about preferences for the story vs. the movie. Let's talk about that issue here, so that people who are interested in that topic can do so.
Gay men, obviously, have freedom to be gay men wherever they like.
LauraGigs:
--- Quote from: ineedcrayons ---The movie is what really made an emotional impact on me . . . it is not as zealously unsentimental as the story. [Annie Proulx's] spareness was so extreme as to ultimately be, for me, off-putting.
Some of the elements used to undercut otherwise touching moments -- "he missed Ennis bad enough sometimes to make him whip babies," the flashback of Jack's dad peeing on him -- were just a bit too ascetic.
--- End quote ---
This is exactly how I feel about the book vs. the film. Proulx wraps a raw, tender bleeding heart of a plot in such a dry prose style, the raw emotion is (almost) obscured . (Evidently not a problem for other readers, but it tripped up my experience a bit. Listening to RodneyWY's live reading was so illuminating for me.)
Also, the film really illustrated the internal dialogue — the thought/emotional processes of the characters like the story never did. IMO, an entire new dimension was presented there.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: LauraGigs on December 05, 2007, 10:42:41 pm ---(Evidently not a problem for other readers, but it tripped up my experience a bit. Listening to RodneyWY's live reading was so illuminating for me.)
Also, the film really illustrated the internal dialogue — the thought/emotional processes of the characters like the story never did. IMO, an entire new dimension was presented there.
--- End quote ---
And in return, I agree with these statements! One, that Rodney's reading helped me find more emotion in the story. It's strange how to some people all the emotion is there right away, and for others it isn't, or at least it isn't until they see it dramatized in the movie. But Rodney really brought it out well -- in a way that was moving, and wholly independent of the movie.
And two, that I was better able to access the internal lives of the characters in the movie. Strange, because with books and movies it's usually the other way around. After all, books can just come right out and say what characters are thinking, and movies have to show them thinking it.
But Proulx rarely does say what her characters are thinking. So to me, anyway, they came off as rather flat. And the actors in the movie -- Heath Ledger in particular, but the others, too -- do such a great job of revealing their thoughts and feelings without using dialogue that I suddenly understood the characters much better after seeing the film than I had when reading the story.
brokeplex:
--- Quote from: LauraGigs on December 05, 2007, 10:42:41 pm ---This is exactly how I feel about the book vs. the film. Proulx wraps a raw, tender bleeding heart of a plot in such a dry prose style, the raw emotion is (almost) obscured . (Evidently not a problem for other readers, but it tripped up my experience a bit. Listening to RodneyWY's live reading was so illuminating for me.)
Also, the film really illustrated the internal dialogue — the thought/emotional processes of the characters like the story never did. IMO, an entire new dimension was presented there.
--- End quote ---
do you think the dry, sparse prose of AP makes the poignancy of the tale all the more sharper?
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: brokeplex on December 06, 2007, 10:06:44 am ---do you think the dry, sparse prose of AP makes the poignancy of the tale all the more sharper?
--- End quote ---
It does for me with respect to when Ennis finds the shirts.
Possibly this is because the story doesn't give us the post-divorce scene, and Jack's reaction. The story only refers to the post-divorce episode retrospectively, as the only time in 20 years that Ennis telephoned Jack until the postcard came back marked "deceased." I don't get from the story the sense that I do from the film of Jack's longing, over 20 years, to be with Ennis, so when I read the story and get to the part where Ennis finds the shirts--and there is the tangible evidence of Jack's abiding love--real love--over all those years, yes, I guess it does kick me harder than it does when I watch Heath find the shirts.
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