Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
Paper Bags
alec716:
"Reverberate" is TRULY a word which descirbes my ongoing experience of this story. Thanks, Iris, for bringing it to mind!
whiteoutofthemoon:
--- Quote from: iristarr on June 10, 2006, 12:51:21 pm ---After all this time, and my being away from these forums for many weeks, I'm hooked again by this thread and the insightful thoughts here. I always wondered where Ennis got the cloth bag he carried his belongings in when he left the mountain. Maybe it was a sack that flour came in while they were up there. Any other ideas?
--- End quote ---
Now see, in that scene, he COULD have used another paper bag, but of course we would never believe that a paper bag would have survived all that time in the damp weather, so i presume it was a potato sac. But also, it sets up the bookends....that is, if he used a paper bag in that good bye scene, then it would not be a perfect bookend with the paper bags at the beginning, and then at the end.
I'm sure someone also brought this up already, but I also wanted to add how well the paper bags ties in with the other main bookends.....the beginning of the movie has a dawn scene with a truck carrying Ennis going from right to left. Ennis, of course, has the original paper bag in that truck. Then after the Twist house, you see a dusk scene with the truck going left to right, and Ennis has the second more meaningful bag.
Ang Lee is genius here: Dawn to Dusk.... the twenty years summed up in a symbol of one day. Dawn with meeting Jack, Dusk with losing Jack. And the only thing that was different in those two scenes was the contents of a simple, poignant, humble paper bag. Furthermore, and if I'm not mistaken, even after 20 years, one of the shirts in the bag at the end is the very same shirt Ennis is wearing when we first see him at the very beginning. Pretty damn cool touch.
Front-Ranger:
I found another pair of "bookend" scenes in the movie. I wonder if anyone else sees it this way. There is a corollary to the Ennis and Alma Thanksgiving scene and it's not the Childress T-giving. It's when Randall and Jack are sitting on the bench waiting for their wives to "powder their noses." In this scene, Jack is uncomfortable, just like Ennis is sitting at Monroe's table. Both scenes portray a confused exchange of words. Ennis's girls want him to be a rodeo star, and he tells them he is far from one. Jack wonders why women would "powder their noses" just to go home and go to bed. Shortly after, the women appear and it is eminently clear why they were "powdering;" it was a chance to gossip about their husbands and continue their exploration of what all they have in common, which they are finding to their dismay, is quite a lot. The nut of the two scenes is when a seemingly innocent comment mushrooms all out of proportion. Jack says, You'll like working for Roy Taylor, which inspires Randall's quiet seduction sequence...crappy house...lake...fish a little...drink whiskey. During this, we see that Jack has a fearful, anxious look, but also the cinematography is a mirror image of the Ennis/Alma Thanksgiving scene, with Jack in the foreground, out of focus, and the accuser (Randall) in the midground, sharp. And in both of the scenes, the spouses are away.
serious crayons:
F-R, you are so observant! :)
Another thing. In both cases, there is earlier awkward tension between the lead character and his spouse (or ex). Lureen's "husbands never wanna dance with their wives" and Alma's queasy expression at the dinner table. In both cases, the men deflect it by turning friendly attention to some other female at the table: Jenny (and Alma Jr.) in one case, LaSahwn in the other.
It's a lucky thing Jack didn't grab Randall's wrist and threaten to make him eat the floor ... or is it? :-\
Front-Ranger:
Let's look for more bookends when we watch the movie together tomorrow.
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