Re: Jack and Ennis - Lake Scene and a Unique Camera Move
by - Wooski (Mon Jan 2 2006 12:30:02 )
I'm not so sure Jack had given up on Ennis. When youre in love with someone its so difficult to walk away. Who knows what would have happenned if Jack had not died. I'm sure Annie Proulx doesnt know either.
Re: Jack and Ennis - Lake Scene and a Unique Camera Move
by - Julie01 (Mon Jan 2 2006 12:48:35 )
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I have not yet cried in the film, but the intelligence and sensitivity of the men discussing it in this thread...brought me pretty close.
We see those in the light,
But those in darkness,
We don't see,
Bertolt Brecht
Re: Jack and Ennis - Lake Scene and a Unique Camera Move
by - Belindah (Mon Jan 2 2006 13:05:05 )
Anybody else get the impression that Prieto's out of work? He's posting way too much here.
Re: Jack and Ennis - Lake Scene and a Unique Camera Move
by - ayang71 (Mon Jan 2 2006 13:16:08 )
Wang Wei is a very famous Chinese poet around 1000 years ago. ALmost every elementary school in Taiwan teaches one or two of his poems. It's very possible Ang Lee is inspired by Wang Wei's poem for the setting or simply just for his personal homage to his lost father or friend. Now you mentioned, I think it's a very interesting and muti-layered reading of the film.
Re: Jack and Ennis - Lake Scene and a Unique Camera Move
by - starboardlight (Mon Jan 2 2006 14:05:10 )
I'm sure Annie Proulx doesnt know either.
actually, in the short story, they don't break up. "Ennis was back on his feet and somehow, as a coat hanger is straightened to open a locked car and then bent again to its original shape, they torqued things almost to where they had been, for what they'd said was no news. Nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved."
Despite Casey's brilliant observation, I prefer to hang on to these lines, and believe that had Jack had not decided to leave Ennis.
Re: Jack and Ennis - Lake Scene and a Unique Camera Move
by - GregoriusInLA (Mon Jan 2 2006 14:31:34 )
"There's another literary/musical reference that this closing shot irresistibly brings to mind for me, although I have no reason to think that it's anything other than coincidental. It's from The Song of the Earth, a setting by the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler of a collection of Chinese poems (in German translation)."
Wow! I love your observation--incredibly astute.
I always felt that Mahler's text for "Das Lied," which was drawn from Hans Bethge's "Chinese Flute," was more of a stylization, rather than an actual translation, of poems by Li-Tai-Po.
Re: Jack and Ennis - Lake Scene and a Unique Camera Move
by - Julie01 (Mon Jan 2 2006 14:52:12 )
They are NOT "breaking up," but Jack is, in the future, going to allow himself a deeper level of sexual attachment to other men--that's what all the out-of-focus jazz is all about. If Ennis would call, he'd still come running! And, apparently, it was his somewhat more open lifestyle with the neighboring rancher that--got him killed. (For those who have still not read the book, it's much clearer there--already discussed).
We see those in the light,
But those in darkness,
We don't see,
Bertolt Brecht
Hey---read...I ordered Proulx' Close Range; Story to Screenplay: Brokeback Mountain; Hain's Mysterious Skin--and I'm going to buy the Shipping News once my finances have recovered. For the price of one viewing of BBM, for you non-youths and non-old folks (like me!), you can buy the short story--the way Proulx wanted it to be origionally, not the way the New Yorker insisterd on printing it (I think I'll get myself one of those, too, though...)
Re: Jack and Ennis - Lake Scene and a Unique Camera Move
by - littledarlin (Mon Jan 2 2006 14:52:53 )
i have to go see this again. now. i really appreciate your points of view. you definitely have an eye. this is something i'm going to be looking out for, but as others have said, by that point into the movie you're so involved with the plot and characters it's hard to think about anything else. it's just such a moving film. i'm getting nauseated just thinking about it. in the best way possible, though. lol
Brokeback Mountain got me good
Re: Jack and Ennis - Lake Scene and a Unique Camera Move
by - CaseyCornelius (Mon Jan 2 2006 15:09:07 )
UPDATED Mon Jan 2 2006 15:11:27
tomwspoon:
I may have overstated it when I referred to Jack as 'moving on' from Ennis. I don't think he ever really could have abandoned Ennis and I'll admit agreeing with rvognar01 in the post immediately preceding this one who suggests that the 'out of focus' characteristic alludes to Jack allowing a deeper level of sexual attachment to other men, specifically Randall as it turns out. Thanks rovgnar01, I am more sympathetic with your interpretation.
I will, tomwspoon, maintain that the 'weight in the balance' camera move is meant to show us something of Jack's internal state, so whether Ennis is aware of it or not is a moot point. It's also striking that it's a filmic device that deliberately implies, for the first time in the film, some psychic separation, 'a fork in the road', between the two of them. Though, I want to maintain with Annie Proulx, that they do manage by the end of this scene to 'torque' things back to where they were.
Re: Jack and Ennis - Lake Scene and a Unique Camera Move
by - jsreeniv (Mon Jan 2 2006 15:10:46 )
I noticed that shot too, and it was one of my favorites in the movie. I interpreted the camera oscillation as Jack's reaction to Ennis's words, the same words and excuses he's heard over and over again - were I subtitling Jack's thoughts at that moment, I would choose, "blah, blah, blah...here goes Ennis again." Even though J and E are both standing STILL, the optical illusion is of Ennis moving, or of Jack literally "turning Ennis around" in his mind, assessing his commitment and coming out disappointed.
Some other great shots were those of Ennis scrambling through his apartment getting ready to take off with Jack. I can't remember if those were long tracking shots or not, but they seemed very fluid and well-choreographed.
Re: Jack and Ennis - Lake Scene and a Unique Camera Move
by - CaseyCornelius (Mon Jan 2 2006 15:20:00 )
UPDATED Mon Jan 2 2006 15:32:26
jsreeniv:
You're spot on with your phrase "Jack literally 'turning Ennis around' in his mind".
Makes the affective content of the image clearer and even more compelling to me. Thank you.
Re: Jack and Ennis - Lake Scene and a Unique Camera Move
by - naun (Mon Jan 2 2006 15:44:29 )
UPDATED Mon Jan 2 2006 18:13:43
It's very possible Ang Lee is inspired by Wang Wei's poem for the setting or simply just for his personal homage to his lost father or friend.
Homage to his father -- what a striking thought. Annie Proulx said herself in an interview that she thought Ang Lee had put some of his grief for his recently deceased father, with whom he had had a difficult relationship, into the making of this film. It is just conceivable that there is an autobiographical element in the film's closing image. The "shrine" on the left-hand side could be seen as a symbol of reconciliation between father and son. Could it be significant that Taiwan is extremely mountainous just like the picture on the postcard, and that when Ang Lee first left Taiwan to study in America, he came to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which is surrounded for miles and miles by exactly the kind of crop fields you see through the window on the right-hand side? (There is also a historic experimental crop field right in the middle of campus; I know because I happen to work at this university.)
Am I getting carried away?
Re: Jack and Ennis - Lake Scene and a Unique Camera Move
by - mlewisusc (Mon Jan 2 2006 16:16:58 )
Could this "psychic separation" also be seen as a foreshadowing of Jack's impending demise? Unquestionably an important "fork" in their road together - more significant that Jack opening himself up to deeper involvment with other men. I am very attracted to your argument that it shows Jack's point of view in weighing Ennis and their relationship at that point in his mind, but perhaps the symbol is from the silent, omniscient "narrator" of the film directly to the audience?
Re: Jack and Ennis - Lake Scene and a Unique Camera Move
by - naun (Mon Jan 2 2006 16:27:45 )
UPDATED Mon Jan 2 2006 20:50:37
Thanks for these further thoughts. I'm glad I wasn't totally off the mark with these speculations!
Anywhere you know if we can find out if it might have been an influence - either via an Ang Lee interest in Mahler OR, and more likely, from his familiar with the original poetry?
I would assume it would have had to come from Mahler, since (at least according to my CD booklet) the last few lines evoking the green earth and the blue sky were added by him -- clearly in order to recapitulate the lines from the first song in the cycle (by a different poet) which contain the same images.
I have no idea what Ang Lee's musical interests are, and there's no way you could tell from his films, which have soundtracks that are as various as their settings. But even if the reference isn't deliberate, the image could still be part of an ancestral stock of cultural images that Ang Lee carries around in his head; ayang71 mentions that Wang Wei is taught in Taiwanese schools. And of course, Ang Lee must be a person who can digest a vast amount of cultural information of all kinds, otherwise he couldn't possibly make the films that he does.
I'd love to have a more definite answer, though.
Somewhere around pages 35-45 of the General Discussion thread [on the Dave Cullen site] an astute poster mentions that the image of a full moon invokes union with a faithful lover and/or friend either in close proximity or from a distance, where both regard the same moon.
Originally I had assumed that the shots of the moon in BBM were a remnant of the line in the short story, much discussed on this board, where Ennis feels like "pawing the white out of the moon". But of course if the Das Lied reference holds up, the image assumes a further layer of significance.
I've come across that idea of two people regarding the same moon only once before, in Elizabeth Jolley's novel "My Father's Moon", but evidently it's had wider currency than that. It's certainly a very powerful reading of that image.
Several other things struck me about the passage from Das Lied that I quoted: the mention of the horseman, the farewell, and the wish (like Jack's) for a final resting-place in the mountains.
I haven't looked at the Dave Cullen site for a while. It sounds like it would be worth spending some time there.
Re: Jack and Ennis - Lake Scene and a Unique Camera Move
by - naun (Mon Jan 2 2006 16:41:07 )
A couple more thoughts on the "sea-change" theory:
1] She's pledging her love to another man who, she assures Ennis, loves her in return. Contrast that with Ennis's incessant inability to ever openly pledge the same to Jack.
[I get teary at the thought that this is the first time we EVER hear Ennis speak the word 'love' in the film. The only other character to verbalize it is Cassie with - "Ennis, girls don't fall in love with fun."]
Locksley_Hall made what struck me (and others) as an inspired observation in another thread when she likened Ennis' "I swear", in the light of the Alma Jr scene, to a marriage vow. That would be the biggest change of all.
2] Ennis, after his initial 'humming and hawing' and starting to give one of his habitual reticent excuses as to why he won't be able to attend her wedding, demonstratively relents and toasts her.
In all the other scenes his excuses are about work commitments. Here he says, astonishingly for him, "They'll have to find themselves another cowboy".
I'm no optimist by nature, but I would dearly like to find positive connotations in the closing scenes of this film.
Re: Jack and Ennis - Lake Scene and a Unique Camera Move
by - CaseyCornelius (Mon Jan 2 2006 20:07:48 )
nene2:
If you're a fan of the closet shot, check out the extensive Deliberate Classical References thread where a number of posters have had pertinent, perceptive observations and interpretations of that scene.
Re: Jack and Ennis - Lake Scene and a Unique Camera Move
by - CaseyCornelius (Mon Jan 2 2006 21:31:34 )
UPDATED Mon Jan 2 2006 21:33:21
naun:
Wonderful your suggesting an auto-biographical intent and a hommage to Lee's father in that final shot. I'd read that quote from Proulx, but hadn't considered that Lee might have integrated his grief in the process of making the film in some tangible form.
Of course you're not getting carried away. Who cares if it's a 'stretch'. This whole thread is such and it's inspiring to banter and juggle such thoughts.
To quote Risely in Merchant/Ivory's 'Maurice' [I don't believe the line is from E.M. Forster's novel.] --"Talk, Talk, Talk. Only by talking will we caper upon the summit."
And thanks for bringing to mind the corn fields of Illinois. I'm Canadian, but did graduate work at Urbana-Champaign in the mid-1980s. I was mindful that Lee had studied Theater there, but had not considered that singular landscape as applicable to the film - possibly because I know it was shot within an hour's drive of where I now live.
Re: Jack and Ennis - Lake Scene and a Unique Camera Move
by - Ellemeno (Mon Jan 2 2006 22:17:24 )
Thank you. Because I had read this thread, I was able to observe and appreciate the camera angles when I saw it for a second time tonight. I was also able to wow the people in front of me by telling them about them. I was clear with them that these were not my own original insights.
peace on earth, goodwill to all