Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
"Versimmilitude"
Rayn:
--- Quote from: fontaine on June 26, 2006, 11:04:28 am ---
Maybe one of the true achievements of this story was rendering such life-like characters and creating such a high degree of verisimilitude. What do you think?
--- End quote ---
Absolutely! The characters are so real that they are life-like. They reflect the truth of many real lives past and present. Fiction does allow us to see the inner lives of people/characters, it's true, and don't forget poetry. Poems can do the same thing, especially some of more Confessional Poets like Ginsberg, Plath, Sexton and even Frost or Dickinson. It's a bit more difficult to understand poetry because it can be like a "different language", but poetry very often reveals the inner lives of very intense people.
Rayn
fontaine:
--- Quote from: Rayn on June 26, 2006, 02:08:24 pm ---Absolutely! The characters are so real that they are life-like. They reflect the truth of many real lives past and present. Fiction does allow us to see the inner lives of people/characters, it's true, and don't forget poetry. Poems can do the same thing, especially some of more Confessional Poets like Ginsberg, Plath, Sexton and even Frost or Dickinson. It's a bit more difficult to understand poetry because it can be like a "different language", but poetry very often reveals the inner lives of very intense people.
Rayn
--- End quote ---
Poetry is an interesting idea. I've been focusing most on stories--written and filmed. In one classification I saw, it mentions epic poems as a type of story, but I think you've hit on something in mentioning these short poetic moments. It's like Annie says in "everyone believes a speckled coffeepot!"
BTW, Frost is my favorite poet. I "get" his poetry (and can even recite "Stopping by Woods" by heart) but don't get most of it. Maybe a feeling, but it's so fuzzy, I feel more confused than inspired.
If you'd like to wax on about this idea of poetry and versimmilitude, I'd be very interested in hearing it!
Front-Ranger:
Yer welcome, latjoreme! I'm glad you're putting the STS book to such good use! BTW, our wordy friend Toast uses that quote from AP as his signature. I love that quote, and it has inspired me to spend several afternoons rummaging around in antiques stores and flea markets for the perfect spatterware coffeepot. It's amazing the variety of styles there are; I found one that was perfect but no top. Another one had a different style of handle, others were too gray or too blue. I'm also constantly searching for the perfect picture of a coffeepot, see below for an example. My search continues!!
fontaine:
Looking at that picture of the coffee pot made the word "metaphor" spring to mind. Specific images and details invite associations through metaphors. Now that I think of it, this movie was saturated with metaphors, some of which were explained (Texas women don't get older, they just get blonder) and some, like the coffee pot, that don't--nor do they need to.
The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the kind of deep emotional response people have to Brokeback (and other movies like Titanic and Harold and Maude), rely on metaphor and people making connections between the film and their own emotional life.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: fontaine on July 06, 2006, 11:48:49 am ---The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the kind of deep emotional response people have to Brokeback (and other movies like Titanic and Harold and Maude), rely on metaphor and people making connections between the film and their own emotional life.
--- End quote ---
That's interesting, Fontaine. Do you mean that people respond, not only in the obvious way to the plot and characters, but in a more subtle, Jungian way to the metaphors?
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