Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > All Things Brokeback: Books, Interviews and More
David Denby on watching "Brokeback" on a small screen
Jeff Wrangler:
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.
--- Quote ---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.
--- End quote ---
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:
--- Quote ---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.
--- End quote ---
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.
SFEnnisSF:
Oh yeah, watching it on DVD, it's nothing like how it was in the theatres. That's why I saw it 45 times in the theatres! :D Everybody reading this should make an effort to go to the Bay City Michigan Screening...
http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,5549.0.html
Man I wish I had driven to Fresno though and saw it on the IMAX screen there.
David:
Yup. Seeing the mountains on the big screen was breathtaking. Even my Mom commented on that after she saw it on the big screen.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: sfericsf on January 08, 2007, 02:33:42 pm ---Oh yeah, watching it on DVD, it's nothing like how it was in the theatres. That's why I saw it 45 times in the theatres! :D Everybody reading this should make an effort to go to the Bay City Michigan Screening...
http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,5549.0.html
Man I wish I had driven to Fresno though and saw it on the IMAX screen there.
--- End quote ---
OMG, that mountain scenery on an IMAX screen? :o THUD. (Jeff keels over in a dead faint. ...)
SFEnnisSF:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on January 08, 2007, 02:58:12 pm ---OMG, that mountain scenery on an IMAX screen? :o THUD. (Jeff keels over in a dead faint. ...)
--- End quote ---
Yeah, and I missed it. I kick myself for missing this. RonTrigger is the lucky one of us who saw it there many times, as that's his home town. And it would've only been a 2 hour drive for me. Uggh! :(
It wasn't on IMAX film, but this particular location has a stand alone former IMAX theatre that they now use to show traditional 35mm movies on. They showed BBM for about 8 weeks on the IMAX screen!
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