I thought those without access to
The New Yorker might find this interesting. It's from Denby's article, "Big Pictures: Hollywood Looks for a Future," in the Jan. 8 issue of
The New Yorker. Denby is a film critic for the magazine.
I looked at "Brokeback Mountain" on a portable DVD player with a seven-inch screen and headphones--the kind of rig people use on airplanes and in jury waiting rooms. The focus was precise, the color bright. And, through the headphones, I heard such extraordinary details as the flip-flip-flip of the rain on the tent when Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger are up in the mountains. Yet there was something wrong. I was not in the mountains. The grandeur of the terrain is not something the men are necessarily conscious of, but the massiveness of the mountain range, the startling clarity of the air, the violence of the weather enlarge the experience of the feelings they have no words for and can't control. If you watch the movie on a small screen, you're not living within this great breathing, palpable place. The small screen takes the emotion out of the landscape.
Essentially I agree with Denby. It's nice to be able to "visit" with Ennis and Jack anytime I want to in the comfort of my own living room, but for me, the experience of
Brokeback Mountain is most definitely and probably unavoidably diminished on the small screen.
Denby goes on to add:
The experience was dissatisfying in other ways, too. Having a highly detailed soundtrack in your head and a reduced image before your eyes is an oddly unsettling experience. It's as if the movie had been pulled back to the editing stage, before the sound and picture were "married." You are reminded of the obvious reason that theatres have put speakers behind the screen all these years--so that the words seem to be coming out of the characters' mouths. In "Brokeback," as a storm breaks, the lightning flashed onscreen, but the the thunder roared in my head.
Denby also talked with James Schamus about running Focus Features, which he characterizes as a "specialty" division of Universal. He also shares that to market the movie, one of Focus Features' target groups was older women who do volunteer work. This group was targeted because they were thought to be more compassionate.
