Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum

Proulx "these characters began to get very damn real"

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optom3:
When I was re reading,yet again Proulxs' essay Getting movied.Those words leapt off the page at me. If the characters wre becomming so real to her,something she says had never happened to her before,what chance did we the viewer stand.We were witnessing the whole thing unfold not just in words,but in superlative acting and wide screen technicolour.

Many of us have wondered why we became so involved in the film.Is this the answer.She also intersetingly implies the characters were disobedient.She says they were unlike her other characters "who do what they are told".
She finishes that section by saying "Jack and Ennis soon seemed more vivid than many of the flesh and blood people around me"

Is that not something that has happened for many of us? Jack and Ennis became real,we lived their pain,we truly felt it, and so were deeply impacted by the film beyond anything we had experienced before.
Just as Proulx writing the story experienced a first in terms of her characters becomming real,so was it not for many of us a first.

It almost appears to me at least that both writer and viewer experienced something akin to an epiphany.It may be argued that the same was also true for Heath and Jake,tackling probably the roles of their lives.They too,particularly I feel Heath,became the characters.
It all became real for all of us.Hence the immense sensation of desolation and loss.

I would as always, appreciate others thoughts on the matter.

Artiste:
Optom, you sure bring up a great subject!

I totally agree with you!

I think that Annie feels for gay men, finds that society isolates them and that, therefore, gay men isloated themselves (and still do to certain degrees), in order to save their lives. Lives are REAL therefore for her... and for US too!!

She also adds much more?

Awaiting your news and will read them after going into the snow to shop for mother who has a cold,

take care,

au revoir,
hugs!

Shakesthecoffecan:
You know how we have all felt, and wrote about here. Can you imagine what it was like, for months on end, having Jack and Ennis in your head and you were all alone in the world with them? That would have been quite a load to carry.

Mandy21:
By the same token, what about Susan and Larry, the screenwriters?  Taking a 53-page book and having to crawl inside not only Jack's and Ennis's (and all the other character's) minds, hearts, and souls, but into Annie's as well?  And turning that into 2 hours and 14 minutes of heaven for all of us?  I'm sure their task was no less daunting, and no less real and traumatic, than Annie's.

myprivatejack:
IMO,we feel so identified with the characters because they're so real; and they're so real because there's no point of heroicism in them.On one hand,they needed to be a kind of heroes to deffend their love and the life's style that this meant, if they'd arrived to share this "sweet life" in such a difficult social and religious environment.But thier heroicism comes from the normality,not from any extraordinary situation or behaviour.And on the other hand,as I said in another topic,they're just like all of us,with their-and our-faults,mistakes,doubts,and even this unavoidable hurt to third persons-like Alma's case,f.e.-.They're  not like the romantic prince of a Fair's tale;THEY´RE REAL,AUTHENTICAL,AND HUMAN.
And they're so in a context of dignification of homosexuality roles,far from the cliches that almost always have introduced them as a "queer", a neurotic or,OMG¡ a pshyco killer...They're two persons who love and are loved in a way that most of the current love stories don't show.I think it's easy to get identified with them no matter our sexual tendencies or gender,because they love as any of us would be loved and love,or as some of us have loved and be loved in any time of our lives.Simply this.

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