Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS
by - CaseyCornelius (Wed Dec 28 2005 11:03:06 ) UPDATED Wed Dec 28 2005 13:32:50
Brokeback Mountain is becoming an emotional touchstone and a singular experience for practically everyone who sees it. Its depth of expression, detail, and ability to inculcate itself into the unconsciousness of almost everyone who experiences it gives the film the distinction of a truly innovative art work which taps something powerful and myth-based.
SPOILERS
Having seen the film three times, each time more overwhelmed by its brilliance on every level, I've been especially struck by Ennis's visit to Jack's family home in Lightning Flat to retrieve Jack's ashes with the intent to scatter them on Brokeback. Ang Lee's choice of set-design, framing of the action, blocking of the actors, line readings and lighting all make this eerie, stark sequence visually distinct from anything else in the film. It is all redolent of Classical myth and tragedy. Knowing that Ang Lee's background is in theater, it's not far-fetched to assume this is pointedly intentional. It was driving me crazy trying to identify a specific Classical reference until the following struck me.
I've been riffing intensely on this scene and the following may be an interpretive 'stretch', conflating a number of mythic references, but bear with me.
It seems to me to most clearly echo Virgil's "The Aeneid" and the portion in Book VI where Aeneas descends to Hades. Ennis [= Aeneas?] undertakes a 'labor' much as Aeneas in descending to Hades/Hell to recover the ashes of his Beloved Jack and release his spirit from Tartarus where the Sons of Men are imprisoned.
The interior of Jack's family home is like a sepulchre - white-washed, bare, spare, bereft of any ornament, drained of color with a ghostly, unearthly glow illuminating the kitchen through the windows.
Jack's Mother is the Sybil who allows Ennis/Aeneas passage past Cerberus the guardian of the underworld--Jack's Father- the adamantine, unyielding judge of what is meant to be acceptable and allowable.
Jack's Mother/the Sybil mollifies/drugs the intractable Cerberus/Jack's Father with a sweet cake as in "The Aeneid". She offers the same 'cherry cake' to Ennis/Aeneas along with a cup of coffee. Ennis accepts the latter [as an aid to illumination?], rejecting the former, hence, is able to partake of her offer to see Jack's room and the icons and remnants of his life --"I kept his room like it was when he was a boy. I think he appreciated that. You are welcome to go up in his room, if you want."
Ennis, 'undrugged' by the same cherry cake is able to fully experience the earthly remnants of his beloved Jack's life, the details of whose life he has never fully known or realized, which have been protected and maintained in his boyhood room by his true guardian/Mother.
Ennis ascends the deathly, bare stairs to Jack's room where he finds the only true repository of any of the memories of his childhood, the core of his personality. The bare room looking out over the dusty plain and down "the only road" he had every known is heart-breaking. A simple cot for a bed. The rest of the room consists of reminders of Jack's failed dreams. A desk and chair where he failed to make an impression as a scholar. A cowboy figurine is a mocking reminder of his failure to achieve his dream of becoming a cowboy himself. The small .22 hanging in a wooden rack is a mockery of his lack of marksmanship evident earlier in the film. The only thing representing anything of value he might have achieved is the iconic/cult object of his true and abiding love for Ennis - the two shirts hidden away from the prying eyes of Jack's father and the rest of the world. Only his Mother would have been party to their significance.
Jack's Mother/the Sibyl allows him passage out of the house/Hades with the shirts, placing them in a paper bag for transport, even as the Father/Cerberus states adamantly that Jack is "goin' in" the family plot. The final act of hatred of the Father toward his only son is to deny Jack's last wish for his remains to be united with Brokeback, the only reminder of a time and place which gave him his greatest joy in life.
Ennis's final words of "Jack, I swear" echo those of Aeneas when confronted with the 'shade' or ghost of his beloved Dido who committed suicide after he abandoned her.
Aeneas says to Dido's ghost, "I swear by every oath that hell can muster, I swear I left you against my will. The law of God--the law that sends me now through darkness, bramble, rot and profound night--unyielding drove me; nor could I have dreamed that in my leaving I would hurt you so".
Ang Lee's brilliant final shot juxtaposes the closing closet door of Ennis's Brokeback shrine to Jack's eternal memory with the wind-swept fields of ripening golden grain visible through the trailer window and establishes a supreme ambiguity. Are the fields an image of renewal and hope OR an image of intractible inevitability? A symbol of the emotionally limited world which Ennis will inhabit the rest of his days, giving obeisance to the memory of Jack OR a foretaste of the 'Elysian fields' where Ennis/Aeneas will one day be re-united with his beloved?
With the deftness of the great, superior work of art that it is, Ang Lee leaves it to the viewer to answer the final riddle of Brokeback Mountain.
Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...'
by - jmmgallagher (Wed Dec 28 2005 11:21:28 ) Fantastic.
I love that people are thinking so hard about this film.
Annie Proulx's original short story had most of the elements you mention (Jack's mother's offer of the coffee and the cherry cake, Ennis's polite refusal of the cake, her invitation to him to visit Jack's room) but you are so utterly right when you say "Ang Lee's choice of set-design, framing of the action, blocking of the actors, line readings and lighting all make this eerie, stark sequence visually distinct from anything else in the film."
I will also say that the choices made by the actress who plays Jack's mother, Roberta Maxwell, are incredibly beautiful. Like the movie itself, she is absolutely haunting--the fear in her eyes when she looks at Jack's father, the evident gratitude she feels when Ennis accepts Jack's father's refusal without fuss. Her eyes are as luminous as Jack/Jake's eyes, and because of this, the scene is devastatingly effective and affecting.
Beautiful post.
Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...'
by - CowboyFever (Wed Dec 28 2005 11:29:32 ) Speechless .. thank you for sharing
Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...'
by - NYCx (Wed Dec 28 2005 11:29:33 ) What a wonderfully thought-out post. Very insightful.
It's a very interesting analogy, especially the line, "nor could I have dreamed that in my leaving I would hurt you so."
Superb work! A+
Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...'
by - CaseyCornelius (Wed Dec 28 2005 11:45:30 ) UPDATED Wed Dec 28 2005 12:30:06
I agree with you regarding Roberta Maxwell's meaningful, portentous readings of the lines and what she does with her eyes throughout -- it's a stunning, hallucinatory, devastating scene. I'd add the following observation regarding the camera work.
All of the kitchen scene's initial camera shots are at eye-level, the level of Jack's Father's steely, testy gaze as he judges his son's life and the relationship he had with Ennis. It's obvious the Father knew what Ennis meant to Jack and the ways in which Jack had pursued a forbidden love. The intransience of this forced, inexorable, compulsive camera angle shows that Jack's father/Cerberus is in control here as the "stud-duck".
Peter McRobbie, not incidentally, is also amazing in these extreme close-ups.
But, starting with a higher, comparitively 'jarring', noticeably contrasting, overhead shot of Ennis's head, Jack's Mother's bony hand enters the frame, and touches Ennis's shoulder, breaking the 'spell' of the Father's disdain and hatred for what his son was. She [as the screenplay directions indicate] has never been a part of her husband's life, but has endured the hatred which he feels for their only son.
Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...'
by - adamx013 (Wed Dec 28 2005 11:51:08 ) Yes - I love it. I knew there was a reason that I loved and remembered that shot of Ennis from above. Great analysis!!
Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...'
by - CaseyCornelius (Wed Dec 28 2005 12:05:20 ) UPDATED Wed Dec 28 2005 15:22:09
jmmgallagher
Thank you for properly and justifiably giving credit to Annie Proulx for the initial creation of the telling images of the cherry cake, et al. You're absolutely correct--it's all there in the story. I didn't mean to credit them to Ang Lee. But, it is evidence of Ang Lee's brilliance that he took those mythic images and the tenor of Proulx's writing and 'drove them home' with his visual choices.
The use of color throughout the scene and the whole of the film is a work of genius as well. Numerous previous posts have commented on the color blue as being constantly associated with Jack.
The interior of Jack's family home is like a sepulchre - white-washed, bare, spare, bereft of any ornament, save the prominent crucifix in the kitchen [which we could extend into another whole discussion - the subject and theme of The Pentecost and Jack's mother's faith and her ultimate acceptance of her son's expression and object of love in Ennis]. The only color comes from the red of the preserved cherries in the cherry cake and the blue sweater which Jack's mother wears, the obvious source of the dominance of the color blue in the clothing he wears - the blue shirt, the blue parka about which he questions Lureen, wears on their camping trips, etc.
It's my hope that we could try to keep extending this fruitful discussion along. In total contrast to some of the sub-human rants and hateful messages which are being posted on this site.
Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...'
by - arike76 (Wed Dec 28 2005 12:16:08 ) i'm totally blown away. great work with the classical references. glad i took the time to read this thread.
Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS
by - naun (Wed Dec 28 2005 12:42:56 ) Your suggestion about the Dido and Aeneas reference is remarkably persuasive. In an earlier thread another poster made an observation that, in hindsight, appears to lend further support to it. Unfortunately the message has been deleted from the board, but here's part of what it said:
Right after the shot of Ennis sitting in the window, the camera cuts to a shot taken from deep inside Jack's closet - looking out through the closet and across the room toward Jack sitting at the window. It is as if Jack is looking out at Ennis.
I myself found the scene unsettling in the same way. It is as if there is another presence in the room -- the shade of Jack Twist.
Like you, I've been haunted by the look of the entire sequence in Jack's parents' home, and have appreciated reading your analysis of it. More, please.
Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS
by - CaseyCornelius (Wed Dec 28 2005 13:10:03 ) naun
I had missed the earlier post, so thank you for this re-stating of the info. Along with the jarring change from the kitchen eye-level shots to the overhead shot of Ennis, the modulation of the shot with a point of view originating from the distant interior of the closet after all of the closely held shots on Ennis was also affective and striking. The idea that the shade of Jack was calling to Ennis to discover the shirts is so moving and obvious now that you mention it. All in keeping with the hallucinatory, profoundly mythic tone of the whole family-home sequence.
Should we start referring to this as the "Ennis and The Shades" scene?
Bravo!
Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...'
by - jmmgallagher (Wed Dec 28 2005 13:16:59 ) UPDATED Wed Dec 28 2005 13:51:11
The complex work of art that is "Brokeback Mountain" now has had many authors--just compare the different versions of these few lines:
First, from the 1997 story by Proulx:
"In the end the stud duck refused to let Jack's ashes go. 'Tell you what, we got a family plot and he's goin' in it.' Jack's mother stood at the table coring apples with a sharp, serrated instrument. 'You come again,' she said."
Then in the 1997-1998 screenplay by McMurtry and Ossana (which Ossana says was written in about three months):
"JOHN TWIST still sits at the table, still and angry as ever.
JOHN TWIST
Tell you what, we got a family plot and
he's goin' in it.
ENNIS, resigned to this fact, nods at the old man as if he
understands.
ENNIS
Yes sir.
JACK'S MOTHER hands him the sack with the two shirts.
JACK'S MOTHER
(sympathetic)
You come back and see us again.
ENNIS
(nods)
Ma'am. Thank you for this.
ENNIS puts his hat on.
Leaves."
Compare these versions with the same scene in the Ang Lee movie (2004-2005), described so well above in the first post.
Neither the story nor the screenplay bother to describe the kitchen interior, although both mention a plastic tablecloth that Ang entirely dispenses with--the table on which "Jack's mother" so carefully places the cup of coffee is bare and gleaming.
And think what Roberta Maxwell does with the parenthetic instruction in the screenplay: "(sympathetic)"--she gives, instead, a full and complex account of her relationships with her dead son, with her angry husband, and her hopes for a man she knows to have been her dead son's lover. Ang is famous for giving little or no instructions to his actors, expecting them, rather, to "deliver." Think what she does, with her character, who is not even given a name, and in such little time!
I do agree that the actor Peter McRobbie, as John Twist, is also remarkable. His delivery of the line--
"Tell you what. I know where Brokeback Mountain is."
--is absolutely chilling. (All of his lines are from the original story, nearly verbatim.)
Ironic when you think that such people haven't a hope of being recognized even as "supporting actors" when honors like the Oscars are dispensed.
But this is just one moment. The entire movie is a miracle.
Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS
by - CaseyCornelius (Wed Dec 28 2005 13:23:34 ) naun
I confess that I'm trolling in two streams regarding the Classic references.
A poster wdj on Dave Cullen's amazing forum
http://davecullen.com/forum/index.php?topic=17.285 in reply to the discussion on that site
has discovered a stunningly appropriate reference to Aeneas's beloved male friend Misenus for whom Aeneas is primarily searching through Hades. The Sibyl says the following in the John Dryden translation:
Besides, you know not, while you here attend,
Th' unworthy fate of your unhappy friend:
Breathless he lies; and his unburied ghost,
Depriv'd of fun'ral rites, pollutes your host.
Pay first his pious dues; and, for the dead,
Two sable sheep around his hearse be led;
Then, living turfs upon his body lay:
This done, securely take the destin'd way,
To find the regions destitute of day.
The images and themes especially of deprived funeral rites and sable sheep vis a vis Brokeback Mountain are astounding!!