Enough affection shown in second half?

[Andrew]

I'm bringing over a little of the discussion of the film that arose spontaneously on Christmas in Jess's thread in Daily Thoughts, since it also belongs in the Open Forum.  Garry and Jess just got to talking about how hard it can be not to see more of what Jack and Ennis were living for all those years. 

Garry said (to Jess),

I agree with you on our 'needing' to see more of the affection Mz. Proulx wrote of, than what was in the film. It seems these sceens were shot. That image of them hugging there at their last campsight, I use for my computer desktop, is one we don't see in the film. Like you mentioned a while back, I would like to have thrown those lawn chairs in the river, and drug that log down near the fire.  Ennis wasn't one that could put into words how he felt about Jack. All Ennis could really do was show him. And, that scene in Proulx writing is far better at showing that than Ang Lee gave us. The audience needed to see that what they felt for one another was still the fire in their lives.  It created an emptyness in the last part of the film, that made me sort of wonder why they kept doing this to themselves and their families.

I said,

Like everybody else I would have gobbled up ten times as much affection in the latter part of the film.  But I think Ang Lee put in exactly enough to let us know how things stood with them, without letting us feel that there ever WAS enough time on those meetings.  Annie too was incredibly sparing.  The final get-together in the story begins less than two pages after the divorce.  And seventeen years of meetings are folded into one sentence in those two pages, that favorite sentence of mine that begins "Years on years..." She expands on the last meeting, but shows them wasting opportunity even then - " Jack restless and bitching about the cold, poking the flames with a stick, twisting the dial of the transistor radio until the batteries died."

Ang gives us one image -



and much as we want more, and much as we want it to last longer than four seconds, it performs its function.  And I'm amazed that I haven't heard more discussion of this little shot - maybe it's too subliminal.  It's interesting it's done in such a way that it doesn't lessen the impact or shock of the dozy embrace when that comes.  If anything, it subtly prepares for the blowup.  As if, Jack must have been the more startled and angry that Ennis was trying to wiggle out of a meeting after showing that kind of hungry fulfillment of need just the night before.  That little worry wrinkle on Ennis' forehead as he sleeps is perfect.  He is holding on to Jack for dear life, but he is also trying to protect Jack from the cold he knows he hates so much, and from the disappointment he has been holding back from springing on Jack till the morning.

[David]

Great post.

  I too have always been moved by that quick scene.   It is very powerful.    Ennis with his arm around Jack.   So unlike the first tent scene.

  This one scene is an all too brief reminder that Ennis loved Jack despite his inability to say so out loud.

   You just know Jack would leave Randall and Lureen in a heartbeat if Ennis said "I love you Jack".

[Andrew]

As I think about it, there almost had to be wonderful shots like the one Garry mentioned, the distance shot of the two of them standing hugging each other by their tent, that didn't make the film.  But were published separately as that one was.  As a kind of aura around the bare story, around the lives as they were actually lived.

[injest]

HEY!!

Andrew...don't think you are gonna get out of coming and talking to me one evening!  

This is one area that I just wish for my own reasons that there had been different scenes.

As groundbreaking as this film is; I think it woulda/coulda made another step. A scene of physical affection between two men that are NOT twenty and smoking hot would have been a major step (to me).

having said that I do understand the points about why Lee did not.

Just see it as a missed opportunity...

[David]

well, unfortunately Ang left all that on the cutting room floor.   I wish there was a way we could get him to reconsider putting all those little scenes in a special features part of the DVD.    ARG!

[Andrew]

We do need more films about older people too.  And if you get Jake and Heath to play them - well I guess that makes everybody happy!

[Garry_LH]

I can't fully put it into words, but when I think of this derth of affection in the later part of the film, these words from the end of Proulx's magick come to mind.

"...“Jack, I swear—” he said, though Jack had never asked him to swear anything and was himself not the swearing kind."

Perhaps, it is part of the agony these two men put one another through, that makes the lack of physical display of affection even harder to take in the film. Ennis unable to even say this much to Jack when he was alive. And, Proulx's words making me really question who Jack was. Both of them, like all of us, imperfect beings. But they, flawed in so many ways, it makes the lack of even the hugs they shared in latter years a hard pill indeed.  Maybe, I look for some answer within myself to explain the actions I have taken in my own life. Just maybe, I'm wanting Master Lee's film to have said, it's hard, but this is why it was worth it. When in truth, this film slams me with the stark costs of not 'making it worth it'.

I think perhaps this is part of why this film hits some of us so hard even now. It reaches into our own souls and screams 'Enough'. I am not going to accpet the status quo of my own life. 'I' deserve better than what I have allowed my own fears of what might happen if I reach for my own bliss and should fail. Like other's have written, Brokeback Mountian can be taken as as powerfull a morality play as the best the ancient Greeks gave us. It's sheer imagery takes it into the realm of mythology. Which is it not then of the same flavor of the power many find within their own relegious practices?

I think for the moment, I will leave this here. For what I've written, it is more of my own questions I cant not fully answer as yet. Perhaps, this is the greatest power of this film. It gets us to ask the questions we might never have asked of ourselves.

[jpwagoneer1964]

I think that last tent clip shown speak volumes. Things were as they always were between them. We were shown just enough, but I of course wouldn't mind more. And you can always find a huge dead log when you need it.

[mvansand76]

I definitely missed affection in the second half. I regard it as the biggest flaw of the movie.

The part in the book where they spend their last trip together is my favorite in the whole book and I would have loved it if they had kept it in the film, to really see them ride their horses and sit close together at the campfire, would that have made the movie so different?

I think it would have made the Final Confrontation even more excruciating to watch because honestly, in that confrontation, it's hard to feel the love that they must still be feeling. Only the Hug after the Final Confrontation and the Dozy Embrace makes me believe again.

[Front-Ranger]

I was reading an article last night about the Motion Picture Association of America and how it rates movies. The ratings that we are familiar with were established in 1968 and have had a big influence on movies because hardly anyone wants their movie to receive an NC-17 rating. I read where a scene in "Boys Don't Cry" was cut because Cloe Sevingny was "taking too long" and the largely-male ratings board became anxious. I wonder if ratings affected the length and number of love scenes in BBM.

[BBM-Cat]

As groundbreaking as this film is; I think it woulda/coulda made another step. A scene of physical affection between two men that are NOT twenty and smoking hot would have been a major step (to me).

Gee, did I miss something...was there a time in the movie when either Jack or Ennis failed to be smoking hot? LOL.