Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
Why is the "dozy embrace" in the film?
Katie77:
--- Quote from: Andrew on August 08, 2006, 10:38:03 pm ---This topic and this forum - every now and then I step back and realize how lucky I am I found them, and all of you!
An important word in Proulx's sentence for me has always been the adverb: "Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face..." This is Jack looking back on the whole history of their times together: "Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory..." In all their years this is the single moment of artless, charmed happiness...yet this was at a very early stage of their love before they had any inkling of what it would become over the years. Their love on Brokeback had all the perfection of the newborn and all the newborn's lacks, and Jack is relishing the one though aware of the other, from the vantage of years. Denial was still possible on Brokeback - you had only not to look at what you were doing! We are not told in the story how long after their first pairing this embrace was, but IF they did embrace face to face that first summer at a time when it was light enough to see each other's faces, the dozy embrace was a waystation to that daylit embrace. What a dimension Proulx adds to the story with her deliberate mystery! She does not say whether they kissed on Brokeback, or kissed when it was light. What we are allowed to see is always set off against what we are not.
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You are sooooooo right there Andrew....the word "then" is very important, because it reflects that "then" he didnt hug him face to face as a before and after....after, being the time when he did hug him face to face......it shows how far and how much the affection changed, and how Ennis's shyness did disappear "afterwards".....
The dozy embrace, is him remembering the beginning of their love story, at a time when it was about to end.....and it is all the more significant because it is the last time we see them together.....
Rutella:
One of the things that really breaks my heart with the dozy embrace is suddenly seeing how young they are on Brokeback. Every time I watch it I never think of them as looking especially young at the beginning and then as they get older I don't really notice it ('cept for the tache). Then boom, flashback scene and I see all that hope and youth and I burst into tears near on every time. :'(
dly64:
--- Quote from: Rutella on August 16, 2006, 06:55:51 pm ---One of the things that really breaks my heart with the dozy embrace is suddenly seeing how young they are on Brokeback.
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It is interesting that you mention that point. Although this didn't make it into the movie (it would have been hard to depict), Ennis begins dreaming about Jack (after Jack has died). Ennis sees Jack as he (Jack) was when they first met on BBM. They had youth and freedom. They didn’t have all of those years of heartbreak. It was just the two of them, and nothing else mattered. The “dozy embrace” is a sequence that is almost dreamlike. It dares to take us into a very private and intimate moment. We are reminded of what they had and what they could have had … a “sweet life.”
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: dly64 on August 16, 2006, 08:26:18 pm --- Although this didn't make it into the movie (it would have been hard to depict), Ennis begins dreaming about Jack (after Jack has died). Ennis sees Jack as he (Jack) was when they first met on BBM.
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Though they could have put it in the movie fairly easily if the movie had started the way the story did, with older Ennis in his trailer. Would that have been good? What do you all think?
I'm not sure, personally. I so love the movie's beginning I don't think I would like it any other way. And I can say this: it was stretching things to turn a 20-something-year-old into a 39-year-old (though they did a good job!). But making him even older might have pushed it too far.
2robots4u:
Everytime I come to this scene, I pause and remember a time when it meant a lot in my personal life, shed many tears of pleasure, and then get on with the movie. Like so many others, this is my favorite scene....Doug
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