Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum

Comparison between '03 to '05 screenplay: would we still be discussing this film

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mvansand76:

--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on September 21, 2006, 12:55:56 pm ---Sounds like "Brokeback Mountain Meets Terms of Endearment!"  

--- End quote ---

 ;D ;D ;D That is so funny. Oh God, how could they have written this??? I read it a few months ago...Can you imagine what a joke this movie would have been if it was filmed according to this 2003 screenplay?

jpwagoneer1964:
The one thingthat is better, more montages, dialog, from more of the later camping trips.

nakymaton:
I think I've still got a copy of the 2003 screenplay saved on my little keychain drive (along with a copied version of the story and, I think, an intermediate version of the screenplay, and a gazillion clips that I downloaded before the movie came out here... and I should add that I've got the story in two versions that I paid for, too, so I'm not ripping off Annie Proulx!). If anyone wants to read the whole thing, pm me and we can exchange e-mail addresses.

I don't think the 2003 screenplay (or the intermediate draft) is nearly as good as the final movie is. I've been trying to figure out why, and I think that, actually, the locations manager may have summed it up for me. (Full interview is here: http://www.findingbrokeback.com/Interviews/Solly/Solly.html)


--- Quote ---I think that on some level, Ennis is a character all about regret. It is amazing; regret is a theme in a lot of Ang’s movies where true love is postponed for something more important. And the character always regrets it. Falls because of it. If you look at The Ice Storm, a couple passes over true love trying to get by in the suburban jungle. They could be happy but instead they opt for the politics of the suburban jungle. And in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, the lead swordsman passes on true love for duty. Here, Ennis passes over true love for the judgment of other people, out of fear. It is a theme throughout Ang’s movies. When you read it for the first time, you can see it. It’s there. It’s jumping out at you. You’re enjoying reading it, but you are also feeling so bad.
--- End quote ---

This theme of "regret" is really reinforced by all the little differences between the movie and the story. By seeing the love on the mountain -- the second tent scene, the warmer tone to the sheep-sorting scene, all the little gestures of caring between Ennis and Jack, the removal of the sense that Ennis couldn't look Jack in the face during the dozy embrace -- we come to understand, on some kind of gut emotional level, exactly what Ennis is giving up.

And the movie de-emphasizes the rural homophobia, too -- Jack's mother is incredibly sympathetic, and seems to deliberately give Ennis the means to understand how much Jack loved him; Jack's father is still a jerk, but less clearly homophobic; Ennis's daughter may know he is gay, in her conversation with Cassie, and seems entirely on Ennis's side; and the scenes with Aguirre and Jimbo could be taken either to imply a threat or not. (I'm leaving out the fact that Alma doesn't confront Ennis about Jack until she has divorced and remarried, because that's in the story.) For evidence of why Ennis is afraid, we're left with Ennis's memory of the brutal murder his father forced him to see, and Ennis's imagining of Jack's death. (Well, those, plus the ghost of Matthew Shepard, the rumors that BBM wouldn't be shown in small towns, the lame late-night talk show jokes, and the Oscars snub. The real world tells us why Ennis was afraid. But there was less explicit homophobia in the movie than there was in hoopla surrounding it.)

So we're left with this sense of true love that could have been, if only... if only. Regret, and loss.

It's no wonder that some people feel the need to go off and write happily-ever-after AU fan fiction. Or that others re-start the movie at the beginning and watch the mountain scenes again. Or that the movie hurts too much for some of my friends to keep watching it so much... I know people who think it is an incredible movie, and who just can't watch it or talk about it, because they've got some grief or another that is just too real, and they can't handle the pain.

Front-Ranger:
Have you noticed that many topics turn eventually into "could they have lived happily ever after" discussions? That's one thing I can't get into. BBM is a tragedy, and that's part of what makes it so great. I can't understand why people would want to see a rose-colored milquetoast version of it. Am I a curmugeon or something??

serious crayons:

--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on September 21, 2006, 04:19:06 pm --- BBM is a tragedy, and that's part of what makes it so great. I can't understand why people would want to see a rose-colored milquetoast version of it.
--- End quote ---

I don't they really want that. I once started a thread (it might have been at imdb) envisioning a version where, as Ennis is driving away from the lakeside argument scene, we see him suddenly say, "Oh, fuck this!" and crank the truck around in a U-turn, back to Jack. I asked people if they'd rather the movie ended that way.

Everybody, or almost everybody, said no.

But I think the power of the movie lies in the way it leaves the viewer, like Ennis, thinking "if only ..."  We can't just blithely say, "Gee, I'm sure glad Jack is dead and Ennis is stuck in a permanent grief-stricken hell and they both lost their big chance at happiness, because that's what makes this movie so good!"

It's the very fact that we wish things had turned out better for them that makes the movie agonizing and compelling and great. We're forced to keep pondering how things might have been better -- what if Ennis had decided to change? what if Jack had lived? what if when they first left the mountain they'd decided to hang out together a while? what if in the post-divorce scene Ennis had invited Jack to stick around until the girls were gone? etc. etc. -- just to soothe ourselves, even though we know it's hopeless. It's that terrible clash of feelings that keeps us here, I think, month after month, trying to find some happiness for them and peace of mind for us.

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