Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
A Ninth Viewing Observation
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: atz75 on May 16, 2006, 10:42:32 am ---I think the Randall situation just has to be left up to individual interpretation. People will always read this scene in different ways. I'm personally still convinced that Jack is asking Randall to dance (in a non-serious way) but that he's assuming that everyone else at the table will presume that he's asking LaShawn. He knows they will assume this, so he takes this opportunity to be playful and also a bit spiteful of Lureen. He can make eye contact with Randall and still have people (people at the table and the viewing audience) assume that he's looking at LaShawn since they're both sitting at relatively the same angle next to Jack. He can look past her, essentially, and at Randall. He then does shift his eyes to look at her once she replies.
I think it's important that he locks eyes with Randall during the conversation at the table, then during the "want to dance?" moment and then again when he stands up with LaShawn. He's sort of speaking in code to Randall here and trying to figure him out... I think this scene is meant to be all about what we'd call "gaydar" these days. Sometimes you have to do strange and bold things to determine whether or not a person might be gay or open to flirting (it's really not some kind of 6th sense). I think, like some of you, that this is what leads to Randall's offer on the bench.
Last week when I watched BBM with a friend (it was her first viewing) she just freaked out at the Randall scene. And, I don't quite know why it struck such a nerve with her. She said something like... "oh no, this guy is trouble."
:laugh:
By the way, why doesn't Randall ask Lureen to dance after Jack and LaShawn get up? I've always thought that was sort of rude of him.
--- End quote ---
That's how I interpret it, too. I mean the way you do, Amanda, not the way your friend did. (Hunh?! Randall seems like a nice enough guy!) Though I've also thought it was a bit rude of him not to ask Lureen. And she seems slightly miffed -- though mainly at Jack, probably.
As for Jack and Randall's eye contact, now that I think about it, can't you actually see Jack's eyes slide from Randall to LaShawn after LaShawn -- naturally assuming he was asking her, which of course he officially was, while taking the opportunity to flirt with Randall -- chirps, "Why yes! I would!"?
This is kind of the opposite of the Jimbo scene, where Jack's eye contact pisses Jimbo off. The first time I saw it, I didn't get either why Jimbo got mad, nor how Randall knew to extend the cabin offer. Duh! Next time I figured out to watch the eyes.
I love this scene: the eye contact, LaShawn's entertaining blabbing, Jack's cute smile at LaShawn's blabbing. I especially love how so many of the lines seem coded, though often unintentionally. The "husbands never dance with their wives." LaShawn's "ain't got a smidgen of rhythm between 'em" and her various putdowns of Randall's masculinity. The "why do women powder their noses just to go home and go to bed." If eye contact didn't send the message, reading between the lines sure would!
serious crayons:
I just happened to be looking at the imdb archives and called up a thread about bookends in the movie started by (drumroll) ... Amanda! Many of the bookends/parallels/echoes posted there roughly follow the inkblot format: something that happens near the beginning of the movie (often happy, or at least innocuous) has an echo near the end (often sad). There are way too many to count, but if anyone is curious go to the archives http://www.geocities.com/bbmarchive/
and look for the bookend thread.
Here is just one of the many great examples. Ennis' line near the beginning, "You may be a sinner, but I ain't had the opportunity" is echoed near the end with his line to Alma and Jenny at Thanksgiving: "I wasn't no angel ... didn't have no wings."
But then there are all kinds of other echoes, bookends and parallels that don't follow the inkblot pattern. What an amazingly complex masterpiece!
Brown Eyes:
--- Quote from: latjoreme on May 16, 2006, 11:26:20 am ---This is kind of the opposite of the Jimbo scene, where Jack's eye contact pisses Jimbo off. The first time I saw it, I didn't get either why Jimbo got mad, nor how Randall knew to extend the cabin offer. Duh! Next time I figured out to watch the eyes.
--- End quote ---
So, it seems that the Jimbo and Randall scenes adhere to a kind of ink-blot symmetry. Also a yin-yang idea too, since Jimbo is all in white and Randall is represented in dark colors (and the fact that the two encounters have opposite outcomes while they start in the same way... with eye contact, etc.).
Related to the Randall/LaShawn scene... I've always wondered about the conversation that LaShawn has with Jack while they're dancing. She's talking about (it seems) the fact that Jack and Lureen picked them up because their truck was broken down. She talks so fast that I think I'm still missing some of the context of her conversation. And, she goes on about Randall not being very mechanical and ways to fix trucks, etc. I wonder if this is meant to be foreshadowing to Jack's death (or the story about Jack's death fixing the tire on his truck).
Thanks for finding the old bookends thread. Yeah, some good discussions happened there.
cheers!
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: atz75 on May 16, 2006, 03:51:27 pm ---So, it seems that the Jimbo and Randall scenes adhere to a kind of ink-blot symmetry. Also a yin-yang idea too, since Jimbo is all in white and Randall is represented in dark colors (and the fact that the two encounters have opposite outcomes while they start in the same way... with eye contact, etc.).
--- End quote ---
Yes! And, unlike most of the inkblot scenes that go from happy in the beginning to sad at the end, this one goes from sad to ... well not very happy, either, come to think of it.
RouxB:
Can someone please PM Ang, Diana or Larry and Annie and ask what the hell is going on in this movie??
O0
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version