Coming down the mountain – from Brokeback to Laramie
Earlier in the year when I was right in the midst of Brokeback fever, a fellow sufferer wrote the following:
I want to get over this film so I can get on with my real life. But I also don't want to let these characters go. If I think about them, I can keep them alive. If I stop thinking about them, they'll just fade away. That's a tragedy I don't want to live with either.
I posted the following reply which I hoped reassured this person
Don't worry. They ain't leaving anytime soon. We have already absorbed them by osmosis. This film is like an enzyme. Once it gets into your system and you have the appropriate receptors it goes to work on your psyche like yeast in dough. ... At the appropriate stage in this process I will get back to more normal living. I will be a different person but I'll be taking the boys with me. Just like Joe Aguirre's sheep got mixed up with some of the Chilean mob, I'll be bringing down some woollies with the EJ brand.
Well I finally did come down from the mountain and I did the bring boys with me – I had no choice because I had indeed absorbed them and their story. So what is this mountain I, and others are coming down from? And what does this involve?
To me Brokeback Mountain – the entire film not just the mountain – is a place of the mind, emotions and spirit. It is an inspiring and awesome place, a transformative place - but it is also an extremely painful place to be for reasons we all know too well. On one level the film was about a love relationship between two people – a difficult and deep bond existing under worse than difficult conditions – but nevertheless it was a relationship as we understand the term. On another level for me Jack and Ennis’ relationship was not quite of this world. At a symbolic level it represented something spiritual – the soul finding it’s beloved and thereby achieving wholeness.
At this level Brokeback Mountain represented even greater pain than the mere relationship level of two lovers parted – for it involved a kind of spiritual disconnection in which Ennis wandered in the wilderness, partly of his own making and partly of the world’s making. Jack represented the water of life (hope, love, happiness, union with the spiritual dimension) in this parched landscape that Ennis thirsted for but would not drink. Emotionally I wandered around in the Brokeback wilderness with Ennis for months on end, longing for Jack’s return. It seems like a psychological template which mirrors one's own situation in some subtle and perhaps more generalised way. Whatever effect the film was having on me, I knew that accepting Jack’s death was an essential part of the process. But accepting his death was unbearable.
I firmly believe that accepting Jack’s death is the hurdle to get over rather than accepting an inevitable lonely fate for Ennis. Jack’s death is the body blow that makes you to feel the the loss of something precious and the knowledge of just how precious the thing lost was. A sufi poet once wrote: “Do not grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.” It is this hope that sustains me in my own life and I believe Jack more than anything stood for hope. I feel intuitively that our longing for Jack is really a longing for love, happiness and spiritual fulfilment.
At some point, as I predicted, it was time for me to come down from the mountain. Just as Brokeback Mountain provided the environment to make a meditative journey within, I needed a pathway out back to normal life. Ennis needed that pathway too. As the Buddhists say “first enlightenment and then the laundry”.
The road to Laramie provided that pathway for both of us. We both needed to feel normal again! Having experienced the spiritual heights represented by his relationship with Jack, Ennis needed to come back to earth and apply what he had learnt and have a normal, everyday relationship, go to work, come home and cook and get on with his life. Much of what Ennis had lost with Jack did come around in another form in Ellery. Ellery has the same loving nature and emotional maturity as Jack. He has the same patience with Ennis as Jack.
But as the story makes clear, Ellery can never be a replacement for Jack. What Jack represents belongs fundamentally in the spiritual realm. You can never forget someone like Jack and some part of you will always yearn for him. That is true for Ennis. It is true for me and true for many of the readers of this story. Jack also represents joy, love and hope in this life. In seeking those things in the earthly realm with Ellery, I believe Ennis - and the readers of this story - are honouring what Jack stands for in his life and ours.
Topic: Taking Chances, by E. L. Van Hine and L.H. Nicoll (Read 3506768 times)