Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
getting hit hard by offhand revelations (story discussion)
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: nakymaton on September 16, 2006, 12:10:01 am ---I don't think fidelity is really the main point to the conversation. I mean, can they be worrying about being faithful to each other when they're still trying to come to grips with the fact that they really like having sex with each other?
--- End quote ---
OK, I just reread the part Jeff quoted and I see that you both may be right. Ennis isn't so much making sure Jack's been faithful as trying to figure things out: whether he's ------, why he can like doin it with women but it ain't nothin like this, why he had no thoughts a doin it with other guys yet still wrang it out thinkin a Jack.
Maybe I'm committing the cardinal mistake of imposing movie rules onto the story. And this is one of the scenes in which movie Ennis and story Ennis are the most different. Maybe if story Jack had said, "Yeah, from time to time -- that's just how I am," or "Well, you tend to meet guys on the rodeo circuit" or "I never thought I'd see you again and I had to explore other options" or whatever, it would have helped Ennis, possibly without upsetting him too much. I don't know that their relationship is fatally flawed because he doesn't say that, but in any case story Ennis might have been able to handle it. He was tougher.
But I think of poor movie Ennis spreading tar with his blabby coworker, watching the drive-in movie, in bed with his wife, all the while wistfully yearning for Jack. I don't think it would have gone over well if he found out that meanwhile Jack had been blithely fooling around with other guys. But then, as far as we can tell, movie Jack hadn't been.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: latjoreme on September 16, 2006, 12:54:17 am ---Maybe I'm committing the cardinal mistake of imposing movie rules onto the story.
--- End quote ---
No, you're just coming to grips with how different the movie and the story are.
In general, I think the story is a lot simpler psychologically than the movie. I would go along with the idea that fidelity isn't really the issue at the reunion, because they've been apart for four years, and it seems to me that you could say the Relationship really begins at the reunion, because that's where they've both figured out that they've got something between them. "This ain't no little thing that's happenin here," says Jack.
And I get the feeling that Jack's lie in the motel room in 1967 is the snowball that starts to roll down hill and just gets bigger and bigger until 1983. Then, just before Ennis collapses, "as if heart-shot," we read, "Like vast clouds of steam from thermal springs in winter the years of things unsaid and now unsayable--admissions, declarations, shames, guilts, fears--rose around them."
But I agree with you, it would not have gone over well at all if Movie Ennis had found out that Movie Jack had been cheerfully screwing other guys for four years, and I also agree that Movie Jack wasn't screwing other guys for those four years. I think that's one point of the Jimbo scene in the movie, to show us that Movie Jack isn't getting any mansex in that time. It would have been a different movie and a different Movie Jack if he had been.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on September 16, 2006, 01:26:43 am ---No, you're just coming to grips with how different the movie and the story are.
--- End quote ---
Well, I've always known that they're very different. Which is why I always object to imposing the rules of one on the other. I agree with what I believe you've said, Jeff, that they can be useful for understanding one another. But they're different enough that statements about one don't necessarily apply to the other.
My handicap is that I'm so much more comfortable with my analysis of the movie. So when someone says something about, say, Ennis' motivations in the story, I tend to picture movie Ennis, even though it might not apply to him.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: latjoreme on September 16, 2006, 01:38:09 am ---So when someone says something about, say, Ennis' motivations in the story, I tend to picture movie Ennis, even though it might not apply to him.
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Perfectly understandable, Little Darlin'! ;)
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on September 16, 2006, 10:16:08 am ---
--- Quote ---Quote from: latjoreme on Today at 12:38:09 am
So when someone says something about, say, Ennis' motivations in the story, I tend to picture movie Ennis, even though it might not apply to him.
--- End quote ---
Perfectly understandable, Little Darlin'! ;)
--- End quote ---
:laugh:
Then again, I tend to picture movie Ennis even when nobody is talking about Brokeback at all!
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