Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
Red and green
RossInIllinois:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0474672/
;)
Meryl:
Whoa! That's very cool, Ross. I'll bet you have a lot of interesting tales to tell. Thanks for the link! 8)
serious crayons:
Ross, thanks for sharing that. I'd love to hear more about your experiences.
As for this particular case, I'll admit I'm not entirely convinced that red and green have really deep significance. But I am rarely a patron in what Front-Ranger calls "cigar is just a cigar" bar. I have dismissed things in the past only to be absolutely convinced, after further conversation, that some seemingly minor detail or image is loaded with hidden meaning.
--- Quote from: HerrKaiser on April 12, 2007, 02:38:56 pm --- Most film sets and their directors actually do not want 'hidden' or very abscure things in their films that are hard to find or see. they want the message to hit the mass audiences in a direct or semi direct way. If such things go unnoticed, so is their message, and no director I know would want this.
--- End quote ---
Sure. Average movies convey their messages in a simple and direct way so that average viewers will quickly understand what's happening. And in most cases nobody expects anything more than that. Nobody is likely to comb over Firehouse Dog or Blades of Glory or Perfect Stranger in search of subtle metaphors. Even with more supposedly arty fare -- Crash comes to mind -- filmmakers usually seem to want to make things easy for their viewers.
Writers of great literature, on the other hand, are more prepared to challenge readers. They thread the text with nuanced layers of meaning that demand close attention to detail. Annie Proulx does that. And Larry McMurtry, Diana Ossana and Ang Lee obviously decided to carry that approach on into the movie. The film is full of subtleties that most viewers miss. Ten minutes on the imdb board will show you often people don't get BBM. Even those who love the movie don't catch most of the subtleties, especially not at first. I loved the movie on first viewing but didn't realize for months and months how deep it goes. Now I've been discussing it for a year and am still discovering new things. Apparently the filmmakers -- like authors of great literature -- decided to sacrifice easy comprehensibility in exchange for creating art on the highest level.
RossInIllinois:
--- Quote from: ineedcrayons on April 13, 2007, 01:24:07 pm ---Ross, thanks for sharing that. I'd love to hear more about your experiences.
As for this particular case, I'll admit I'm not entirely convinced that red and green have really deep significance. But I am rarely a patron in what Front-Ranger calls "cigar is just a cigar" bar. I have dismissed things in the past only to be absolutely convinced, after further conversation, that some seemingly minor detail or image is loaded with hidden meaning.
Sure. Average movies convey their messages in a simple and direct way so that average viewers will quickly understand what's happening. And in most cases nobody expects anything more than that. Nobody is likely to comb over Firehouse Dog or Blades of Glory or Perfect Stranger in search of subtle metaphors. Even with more supposedly arty fare -- Crash comes to mind -- filmmakers usually seem to want to make things easy for their viewers.
Writers of great literature, on the other hand, are more prepared to challenge readers. They thread the text with nuanced layers of meaning that demand close attention to detail. Annie Proulx does that. And Larry McMurtry, Diana Ossana and Ang Lee obviously decided to carry that approach on into the movie. The film is full of subtleties that most viewers miss. Ten minutes on the imdb board will show you often people don't get BBM. Even those who love the movie don't catch most of the subtleties, especially not at first. I loved the movie on first viewing but didn't realize for months and months how deep it goes. Now I've been discussing it for a year and am still discovering new things. Apparently the filmmakers -- like authors of great literature -- decided to sacrifice easy comprehensibility in exchange for creating art on the highest level.
--- End quote ---
So if the movie viewers don't get it as you say, What does that say about the subtleties you speak of then? ;) In the Film Making Biz if it goes over the viewers heads on the first view you made a mistake somewhere... OR the viewer is reading more than what was intended into it... ;) I do think editing flaws and script flaws and a "General Lack of consistency in its period look" kept BBM from winning Best Picture, not its theme as some would suggest.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: RossInIllinois on April 13, 2007, 02:00:32 pm ---So if the movie viewers don't get it as you say, What does that say about the subtleties you speak of then? ;) In the Film Making Biz if it goes over the viewers heads on the first view you made a mistake somewhere... OR the viewer is reading more than what was intended into it... ;)
--- End quote ---
Well, would you say the same about the Literature Biz? If a casual reader, leafing through Shakespeare or Emily Brontë or Flannery O'Connor, doesn't immediately catch every little nuance, then it's not the reader's fault but the author's mistake? There are literature professors and critics who spend whole careers analyzing great novels, picking them apart sentence by sentence, word by word, finding new layers of meaning. Do you honestly feel like they're reading more into them than was intended? And if not, is there any reason why the same approach couldn't apply to a movie?
Ross, I wonder how much time you've spent reading the many threads here in which people analyzed these things. Here are a few good ones, if you're interested. If you like these, I can find you plenty of others. You probably won't agree with everything that's said, or every interpretation -- I don't, either. But I'd be surprised if you'd come away thinking it's all a figment of people's imaginations. Believe me, the symbols and subtleties and complexities and allusions and mirrors and bookends all really do exist, and they're very deliberate.
http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,569.0.html
http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,3851.0.html
http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,1097.0.html
http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,795.0.html
http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,1266.0.html
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