A long time ago, I started a thread called "Hitchcock Mountain" and I chose to have it taken down. But some of you have remembered it (particularly dly64 and Front-Ranger), and at least a couple of others have asked me to consider reposting it. I have waited to repost until well after the Collector's Edition of the DVD was released, partly because I wanted to see what would be included with the DVD as extras, and partly because I thought it best to let "BbM" mellow a bit and let everyone who cared about it enjoy it's triumph, before my attempt to deconstruct it. I felt that my deconstruction of the film was something a film lover might enjoy (and a Hitchcock fan might enjoy), but that perhaps it was too much information to hand over to trolls who delight in spoiling things for others. (SPOILER ALERT: If you do not enjoy having films dissected, you are advised to turn away now.)
I have compiled many threads about this film. It is a somewhat obsessional activity for me. (IMDB users may recognize me as "True_Oracle_of_Phoenix".) One curious factoid I came upon in my archiving of many threads was this fragment of an interview with Ang Lee while he was promoting "The Hulk":
Interview: Ang Lee
"Hulk"
Posted: Wednesday June 18, 2003 11:51 AM
Author: Paul Fischer
Location: Los Angeles, CA
http://www.darkhorizons.com/news03/ang.php
Paul Fischer: Is Hitchcock an influence?
Ang Lee: Yeah I love him. He is one of my heroes that has done all the weird stuff disguised in popular films and he did it so well and I do admire him although when I do the same thing I have to update it. similar take on Freud and stuff can look too simple today. I like to have a different angle. But yeah, he is my hero.
And so, in Brokeback Mountain the bent Freudian imagery that frames the world of Hitchcock is newly transformed by Ang Lee and the authors into the strangely bent Christian iconography and symbolism that frames the world of Brokeback Mountain and its themes of impossible love, loss, sacrifice, and redemption. Ang Lee was once quoted as having said something to the effect that he enjoyed putting movie genres in a blender. Echoes of Hitchcock, Antonioni, and Bergman all live on in Brokeback Mountain.
Where to start?
The mailbox?
Number 17?
"Number 17" is a none-too-well-known 1932 film directed by none other than Alfred Hitchcock!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023285/ It is an early work from when he lived in the UK, well before his mature Hollywood period. Curiously enough, it was written by ALMA Reville, the woman Alfred Hitchcock would later marry. People have speculated about the significance of the Number 17 on Ennis's mailbox. Is this an inside joke from Ang Lee about some of his inspiration for Brokeback Mountain? If so, it is certainly a joke worthy of his idol Mr. Hitchcock (not unlike Hitchcock's final movie "Family Plot" in which a character literally winks to the camera at the end of the movie). Alma - Hitchcock - Number 17. And what about Jack's father in Lightning Flat? "He's going in the family plot." "Family Plot" - perhaps another Hitchcock allusion?
Curious? Very...
Alfred Hitchcock enjoyed bawdy jokes. He was infamous for a joke that slipped past the censors in "Shadow of a Doubt"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036342/ Young niece Charley wears a ring her Uncle has given her. She notices that inside the ring there are engraved the initials "BM" - a common euphemism for "bowel movement". Hitchcock again hinted at this joke years later in his classic "Psycho" - Bate's Motel. (Strangely enough, the title "Brokeback Mountain" again echoes this joke, and to avoid the "BM" reference, many people - including myself - initialize the movie as "BBM" or "BbM" instead.) in "Shadow of a Doubt", Young Charley will wear the ring her Uncle has given her to communicate to him in a key scene that she understands exactly who and what he is - and that she wants him to leave her family's house and never come back. Similarly in BbM, Alma jr. wears bluebird earrings in her final scene and many have speculated that it communicates in a similar way an equally important but entirely different message - she understands exactly who and what her father is - and that she loves her father, and very much wants him to be a part of her life. In Hitchcock fashion, the cliche is inverted (something old becomes new, and a ring that was borrowed from SoaD, becomes earrings that are blue as she invites her father to her wedding). (The "BM" reference continues in "BetterMost Beans" and comes full circle in the name of this fansite!)
Hitchcock stayed with the genre of the suspense thriller, although he occasionally tried out romance and comedy. Ang Lee prefers to mix things up. The interesting thing is, once you let go of the idea of what a Hitchcock film should be, you find that Ang Lee, Annie Proulx, and the writing team of Ossana and McMurtry have mixed up some rather interesting Hitchcock elements in a film that is not a typical suspense film.
(To be continued...)