Author Topic: Yin and Yang: Ennis and Jack  (Read 84013 times)

Offline serious crayons

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Re: Yin and Yang: Ennis and Jack
« Reply #20 on: June 02, 2006, 08:22:35 am »
Yay! Thank you again, Penth!

What is with just the one cherry? Maybe the cake is like a chocolate-chip cookie, with cherries scattered throughout, and there just happens to be only one showing at the point where it is sliced? For that matter, who makes cherry cake? Or if they did, wouldn't they just have an overall cherry-flavored one, maybe with some whole cherries on top as decoration, rather than a cherry-studded one?

Oh well, this is a topic for another thread. It doesn't have anything to do with yin and yang. ... Unless ... that one cherry, on the white half of the cake, with the other half dark, is supposed to be ...

No. Can't be.

It probably just represents the one tiny bit of love in the otherwise bleak white household.

Offline Meryl

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Re: Yin and Yang: Ennis and Jack
« Reply #21 on: June 02, 2006, 01:27:52 pm »
Oh well, this is a topic for another thread. It doesn't have anything to do with yin and yang. ... Unless ... that one cherry, on the white half of the cake, with the other half dark, is supposed to be ...

No. Can't be.

It probably just represents the one tiny bit of love in the otherwise bleak white household.

*Looks at picture again*

Good Lord, it IS a tiny ying/yang, rectangular like the barn door image, and lacking a corresponding dot on one side!  Are we insane to be noticing these things?  ::)  ;D

I like your interpretation, though, Katherine...a little bit of heart's warmth in a cold, bare place.  :(
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Offline starboardlight

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Re: Yin and Yang: Ennis and Jack
« Reply #22 on: June 03, 2006, 11:56:22 am »
*Looks at picture again*

Good Lord, it IS a tiny ying/yang, rectangular like the barn door image, and lacking a corresponding dot on one side!  Are we insane to be noticing these things?  ::)  ;D

I like your interpretation, though, Katherine...a little bit of heart's warmth in a cold, bare place.  :(

at this point in the film, the yin is without his other half. There is no yang. The circle is incomplete now.

I can't help thinking that the cake was purposefully done that way. In a film, there'd be a prop master that saw to that detail. Would any person cutting the cake thought it'd look weird with only one cherry showing?
"To do is to be." Socrates. - "To be is to do." Plato. - "Do be do be do" Sinatra.

Offline Meryl

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Re: Yin and Yang: Ennis and Jack
« Reply #23 on: June 03, 2006, 12:57:19 pm »
I can't help thinking that the cake was purposefully done that way. In a film, there'd be a prop master that saw to that detail. Would any person cutting the cake thought it'd look weird with only one cherry showing?

I think you're probably right, starboard.  It's a detail that had to be thought out.  Nothing, nothing is too small a detail to leave unnoticed in this amazing film.  8)
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Offline Penthesilea

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Re: Yin and Yang: Ennis and Jack
« Reply #24 on: June 03, 2006, 02:27:19 pm »
at this point in the film, the yin is without his other half. There is no yang. The circle is incomplete now.
This is a good point. The cake reminded me of the yin-yang symbol, too. But I thought it can't be, because it's only one half of it. But you're completely right: the other half is gone. Sad again.

Sometimes I ask myself, whether we are beginning to see ghosts, respectively symbols where there aren't any. On the other side, this cake is unorthodox. And is does look like one half of yin/yang.

Offline nakymaton

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Re: Yin and Yang: Ennis and Jack
« Reply #25 on: June 03, 2006, 04:05:14 pm »
at this point in the film, the yin is without his other half. There is no yang. The circle is incomplete now.

 :'( :'( :'( :'(

Sometimes I ask myself, whether we are beginning to see ghosts, respectively symbols where there aren't any.

Well, I know I'm seeing ghosts. Or at least one ghost. And I know whose ghost it is.  :'( :'( :'(
Watch out. That poster has a low startle point.

Offline Brown Eyes

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Re: Yin and Yang: Ennis and Jack
« Reply #26 on: June 04, 2006, 09:26:56 pm »
Oh, oh, oh!  I've just paused my DVD so that I could run to my computer to post a new yin and yang moment.  During that beautiful sequence of shots of Jack up on the mountain top for his first night up with the sheep (the shots that almost look black and white... or purple and white, due to the darkness and the moonlight) there's a really clear yin and yang.  I'm talking about the shot where he's sitting amongst the sheep and he and his pup tent are towards the bottom left corner of the screen.  The white sheep with Jack as the black dot form the bottom half of the symbol.  The black sky with the white moon (the moon is towards the upper right corner) form the upper half of the yin and yang symbol.  This is really clear visually. 

It's amazing because it works for another big BBM symbol, which is the idea of Jack as a "black sheep" or outcast/ nonconformist type figure.  The moon here is interesting in relation to all our discussions of how important moonlight is as a symbol for lovers or "true" love.  Awww, in this case the yin and yang are being formed by the two key symbols of love for Ennis (Jack and the moon)!
 :D

OK, I'm going back to watch the movie.
cheers!
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Offline Meryl

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Re: Yin and Yang: Ennis and Jack
« Reply #27 on: June 09, 2006, 01:23:24 am »
Here's the shot you described, Amanda:



I think you're right about the yin/yang quality of the image.  Another great catch!  8)

I love that we are able to know how long Ennis and Jack were together before the first tent scene simply by noticing the full moon.  One month exactly.  :)
« Last Edit: January 19, 2007, 01:17:44 am by Meryl »
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Offline nakymaton

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Re: Yin and Yang: Ennis and Jack
« Reply #28 on: June 09, 2006, 04:56:01 pm »
You know, I've been thinking about that "one month" thing. And, ummmm... I think it's possible that it was actually two months.

See, it all comes down to moving the sheep. I figure that they moved the sheep from one area to another because sheep tend to graze everything down to bare rock if they've got the chance. And, well, it seems like they would move the sheep about halfway through the summer, rather than spend one month in one area, and then three months in the other.

I guess it's possible that their real allotment was up so high that the snow wouldn't melt until mid-June, or was on a north-facing slope, or something. I've never herded sheep, so I don't know.

But it's possible that the August snow meant that Jack and Ennis only had one month together. :(
Watch out. That poster has a low startle point.

Offline Meryl

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Re: Yin and Yang: Ennis and Jack
« Reply #29 on: June 09, 2006, 05:57:18 pm »
Well, from what others have postulated, I'm going on the theory that they started up the mountain in May, and Jack in that picture is looking at the full moon of May.  That would make June's full moon the moon of the tent scenes.  So if it was fairly early in June, like it is this month on the 11th, that would give them roughly two months as lovers before they had to bring the sheep down in "the middle of August" as Ennis says, and three months being with each other altogether.

At least I hope so.  :)
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