Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
fffffffzzzzzzzzzzzzzap! (lightning and electricity references)
Brown Eyes:
:laugh:
You're right! BBM has certainly led us to some unique observations. The toaster vs. lightning topic may be right up there with buckets and coffeepots.
:)
Penthesilea:
--- Quote ---From Mel:
Well, as with the water, we've got the lightning on Brokeback, compared to the tame electricity in their domestic lives.
--- End quote ---
This is not only true for water and electricity, but also on the larger scale, the underlying "bigger picture" (in lack of a better phrase). It's another way from Ang Lee to show us that:
Love is a force of nature - the four elements: fire, water, earth, air.
All those elements are tamed, a poor copy, in their life apart from each other, but at their full strength when they're together:
* Fire: Lightning storms vs. electricity
* Water: Streams vs. water tap (faucet?)
* Air: Storm vs. fans
* Earth: beatutiful, wide landscapes vs. narrow houses, apartments and trailers.
Just like their love is a force of nature: strong and uncontrollable ("this thing grabs onto us") for each other, but a poor copy, non-passionate, for their wifes.
Everything keeps coming back to the tagline. To me, the tagline first sounded like simplifiying things, almost like a cliché to promote the movie - but Ang Lee illustrated that's it's not.
Mikaela:
--- Quote from: Penthesilea on November 10, 2006, 03:50:52 am ---Love is a force of nature - the four elements: fire, water, earth, air.
All those elements are tamed, a poor copy, in their life apart from each other, but at their full strength when they're together:
* Fire: Lightning storms vs. electricity
* Water: Streams vs. water tap (faucet?)
* Air: Storm vs. fans
* Earth: beatutiful, wide landscapes vs. narrow houses, apartments and trailersJust like their love is a force of nature: strong and uncontrollable ("this thing grabs onto us") for each other, but a poor copy, non-passionate, for their wifes.
Everything keeps coming back to the tagline.
--- End quote ---
I loved this so much I had to repeat it. All I can say to it is: Yes, yes, yes! :)
Katherine, thanks for explaining the electric carving knife analogy. Makes sense to me.
When it comes to the lack of lightning in the reunion scene, I completely agree with Mel about how the focus in the motel scene is very tight on Jack and Ennis. The focus on just the two of them, the outside world not visible, not making any appearance except through their words, is so effective that I hardly miss a brief opening shot from a couple of metres' distance to show the room in disarray and the guys on the bed. (Who am I kidding? I WOULD have liked to see this. ::) ) But that scene remains one of my absolute favourites in the film. It's so unbelievably intimate. Anyway, I haven't been wondering about the outside world being near to non-existent in that scene - but I have wondered about that in the preceeding kitchen scene with Ennis, Jack and Alma as the guys take off for their motel night. That would have been the place where that distant lightning like a white sheet might have made an effectful appearance. Then again, it might have made for too obvious visual symbolism, not the ambiguous kind favoured by Ang Lee.
I think in that kitchen scene, the film's focus is mainly on Alma and her reaction, much more so than in the story - and hence the lightning outside, as well as the electric currents snapping between Ennis and Jack has been removed altogether or tamped down in the film - to leave the focus on Alma's reaction. (Compared to the description in the book, I do think especially JG is underplaying the visible impact on Jack, so much so that it has to be deliberate from director and actor both.)
There's another part of the short story where lightning makes an impression - this time by not being present. It's during Jack and Ennis's last "fishing trip" together. Never the optimist, Ennis keeps looking out for clouds and stormy weather - and eventually it comes: "A bar of darkness driving wind before it and small flakes". But conspicuously, for once in this lightning-riddled story there is no lightning. And in the very same paragraph the batteries on the transistor radio die. Hence, electricity, both in its wild untamed and domesticated versions, are absent from the scene. And though the story tells us that even so the brilliant charge between Ennis and Jack still is there, it also says that the charge is by then darkened.... by the sense of time fllying. Though the sparks still fly, what they have left by then is just a camp fire, those sparks flying up with their truths and lies..... A camp fire that will die down soon enough.
The entire description of those last days, their last night together, has such a strong sense of foreboding, of light and heat dying and disappearing because the force, the power that feeds them is muted and dying down. Cold darkness is about to descend as a consequence. :'( It almost takes my breath away how much imagery and symbolism are packed into those few simple paragraphs.
nakymaton:
--- Quote from: Penthesilea on November 10, 2006, 03:50:52 am ---
* Earth: beatutiful, wide landscapes vs. narrow houses, apartments and trailers
--- End quote ---
Also, the rocky ground of the high ridges, the rocks in the creek, the rocks around the fire, vs the asphalt that Ennis spreads with Timmy. (Like the power company job that Ennis doesn't take, that's another job that involves the tame version of something from the mountain. Perhaps that's as much of a turn-off as Timmy's plumber's butt. ;) )
(Nice list of comparisons, Chrissi. I agree.)
The Nature metaphor could be easily overplayed, you know. There are all sorts of overly pastoral, idealized depictions of Nature as Good out there... and BBM (both story and movie) manages to use Nature as a metaphor without overdoing it.
Very impressive.
Meryl:
Penthesilea, I had never thought of "Love Is a Force of Nature" as being more than a marketing slogan til you pointed out how well it applies to the film. Thanks!
--- Quote from: Mikaela on November 10, 2006, 07:59:19 am ---Then again, it might have made for too obvious visual symbolism, not the ambiguous kind favoured by Ang Lee.
--- End quote ---
It may be an oversimplification, but this sounds like the most logical reason for the absence of lightning in that scene to me, too.
--- Quote ---There's another part of the short story where lightning makes an impression - this time by not being present. It's during Jack and Ennis's last "fishing trip" together. Never the optimist, Ennis keeps looking out for clouds and stormy weather - and eventually it comes: "A bar of darkness driving wind before it and small flakes". But conspicuously, for once in this lightning-riddled story there is no lightning. And in the very same paragraph the batteries on the transistor radio die. Hence, electricity, both in its wild untamed and domesticated versions, are absent from the scene. And though the story tells us that even so the brilliant charge between Ennis and Jack still is there, it also says that the charge is by then darkened.... by the sense of time fllying. Though the sparks still fly, what they have left by then is just a camp fire, those sparks flying up with their truths and lies..... A camp fire that will die down soon enough. The entire description of those last days, their last night together, has such a strong sense of foreboding, of light and heat dying and disappearing because the force, the power that feeds them is muted and dying down. Cold darkness is about to descend as a consequence. It almost takes my breath away how much imagery and symbolism are packed into those few simple paragraphs.
--- End quote ---
Very nicely observed! 8)
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