Scott, many thanks for your post. What you have written resonates very much with feelings and thoughts I have had about the Brokeback Mountain (BBM) film.
You write:
Yet another similarity is that both stories depict passionate, tragic affairs which end in death and grief for the protagonists, but (and here I invoke the film Brokeback Mountain, as opposed to the Proulx story) in which the torch of happiness and hope is passed onto the younger generation, suggesting that the unresolved issues of the elders will find fulfillment within the lives of the children. Hareton and young Catherine will likely know the connubial bliss that eluded Heathcliff and Cathy, just as Alma Junior will have the experience of living openly with the man who loves her, a joy denied and unknown to her father.
In this one paragraph you touch on two issues which I find especially illuminating. Firstly, how much does the
film BBM differ from the original Proulx story, and how important are the differences? Secondly (tied in with the first question to an extent), does the ending of BBM include a dimension of hope, and how important is that? In discussion of these the
novel Wuthering Heights will also be relevant.
I have now seen the film through a number of times. I have as yet only read entirely through the Annie Proulx story once, although I have carefully re-read particular sections.
My impression as it stands is that there is rather more difference between the short story and the film than seems to be admitted by many. This difference involves both details of the story, and the characters involved in the story. And the changes are actually not just minor details, but are ones which spring from an underlying philosophical difference. That this is apparent
despite the fact that a lot of the dialogue in the short story translates almost directly to the film, is an indication of just how subtly it has been done. In the extra features on the current DVD, Diana Ossana states that it is still “Annie’s story”, and of course it basically is – but I believe that what the film has done has so transformed it that it has now acquired a very important extra dimension (or dimensions). In brief I feel that the film BBM transcends the short story.
I am still in the process of working out for myself why I feel this, using of course many insights from posters on the various BBM forums. As regards the particular insights derived by comparison with Wuthering Heights (WH), I believe that the closest similarity – by some way – is between the
novel WH and the
film BBM. The Proulx story BBM actually stands rather at a distance from these. Even further away – not even on the same planet – stand the various attempts to portray WH on screen (all, in my opinion, more or less dismal failures - perhaps inevitably so).
To put it at its simplest, I believe that the film BBM has a strong metaphysical dimension largely (although not completely) lacking in the short story. In metaphysicizing the BBM story, the film thereby aligns itself much more closely with the novel WH. As for the various WH films, they all fail to represent the strong – indeed all-pervasive – metaphysical dimension of the novel. They thereby manage to transform one of the most remarkable works of genius in the English Language into nothing more than standard romantic fiction (is “chick-lit” the current term for such stuff?). There is nothing necessarily wrong with standard romantic fiction – but neither WH nor BBM fall into that category. It rather annoys me to find Emily Bronte so often put into the same category as writers such as Daphne du Maurier. In fact, Charlotte Bronte does fall into that category (in a very superior fashion) – but Emily emphatically does not.
If I post further in this thread, I may go on to consider how I think the movie BBM manages to transcend the original story.
The importance of Alma Jr (is it significant that she is the last living person to be seen in the film, apart from Ennis himself?) is certainly one factor. Another is
the subtle but significant changes made in the characters of the two main heroes. (Just for starters – I cannot imagine the Ennis of the BBM film ever calling Jack – or anyone apart, perhaps, from his daughters – “little darlin”)
For now - here is another comment on the WH novel from a distinguished literary critic [from Lord David Cecil :
Early Victorian Novelists]:
"
Wuthering Heights - the very name is enough to set the imagination vibrating. We hear it perhaps spoken in a London street, for a moment the intricate roar of traffic and chattering people fades into stillness: and instead our mental ear is filled by the rush of streams, the shock and reverberation of thunder, the whistling of the wind over the moors. Nor is the sound fainter to us than it was to its contemporaries. Alone of Victorian novels
Wuthering Heights is undimmed, even partially, by the dust of time. Alone it stirs us as freshly today as the day it was written"
That comment was first published in 1934, 87 years after the publication of
Wuthering Heights. Another 72 years have passed, and that comment reads as true today.
Will similar comments be written about the film
Brokeback Mountain in 2092? In 2164? I would like to think so - and I can think of no film I have ever seen which would deserve them more - for it seems to me to stand as alone among the films of the present era, as
Wuthering Heights stood as a novel in its era.
That’s enough for now.
Best Wishes to yourself, and to all lovers of BBM and WH.
Frank
