Deliberate Classical References and another 'Jack, I swear' -- by CaseyCornelius

[TOoP/Bruce]

Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - nene2 4 days ago (Fri Jan 13 2006 19:09:28 )   

I think one of the film's strengths is its ambiguities. Things that are clear in the short story are vague in the film, and vice versa. I think that is the way it should be.

I have a very different take on "Jack, I swear . . ." Swearing or making promises has nothing to do with it. "I swear" is an old rural US euphemism for "Damn" or other swear word. Today we would say "Wow!" My grandfather (in Indiana) used to say "I swear" whenever he was astonished or deeply impressed by anything. Tell him the news of the day or show him something unusual and he would say "Well, I swear!" For me, Ennis's last words in the movie mean "Damn it, Jack! All I have are these memories! How could you do this to me?"

I wonder if anyone else takes it that way.


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - rubin2018 4 days ago (Fri Jan 13 2006 19:45:49 )   

Casey,

Just as I can not get the poetry from Brokeback
out of my mind...the same has been true for many
years with Bridges of Madison County. It also had
a devastatingly emotional impact on me for the
lesson of unconditional love and the pain of
separation from your true other half.

Please allow me to share three different lines
from Bridges that still haunt me the same way I
know Brokeback will for the rest of my life.

“For a moment, I didn't know where I
was. And for a split second, the
thought crossed my mind that he
really didn't want me -- that it was
easy to walk away.”

“It seems like everything that I‘ve done
in my life has been to make my way to you.”

“There has not been a day since that
I have not thought of him. When he
said we were no longer two people, he
was right. We were bound together as
tightly as two people can be.”


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - rubin2018 4 days ago (Fri Jan 13 2006 20:26:04 )   

goldilocks,

I have been hooked up to the Internet for 12 twelve years,
but never have encountered anything like this. I never
imagined that such an amazing group discussion like this
could ever take place on the Internet.

Anyway, for some reason your "goldilocks" User Name hit me
as I was reading what you had to say. I kept thinking how
Ennis arrives at Jack's parent's house and sits at the
kitchen table without his hat on. You could actually feel
Ennis's soul opening up as he sat up there in the chair with
his beautiful golden locks of hair.

R.


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - yaadpyar 4 days ago (Fri Jan 13 2006 21:17:11 )   

UPDATED Fri Jan 13 2006 21:20:39
“It seems like everything that I‘ve done
in my life has been to make my way to you.”



Such a powerful quote...the great tragedy of finding the place in which you belong completely only to have made yourself belong elsewhere already.


Re: There's a powerful line in the Proulx story...   
by - rubin2018 4 days ago (Fri Jan 13 2006 22:32:01 )   


That is really interesting now that you bring up the Ennis-Lureen conversation. Think about it VERY CLOSELY!!

Think about the intonation she used when describing how he died.
Verrrrrry Monotoneeeeee. I beg you to listen again! It was as if Lureen had discovered the true facts behind her husband's death......and she felt that she needed to conjure up a less scandalous story to let everyone know what happened.
She was a businessperson through and through. It was like she was repating it for the 450th time. Watch her roll her eyes as she does this. Her eye movements indicate that she is just trying to remember what "her story" was. She probably hadn't had to tell it for a while and had to focus quite a bit to remember her story of her husband's death.

She had the farm machinery business to protect and she wasn't going to let the sins of her husband and the detail of his demise threaten her ability to go out and buy gaudy rings and have her hair done up Hollywood style.

OMG !!! PLEASE FORGIVE ME!!! I must confess that the words "Bad Rim Job" came to mind when thinking about what Lureen said happened to Jack.


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOI   
by - animesux 4 days ago (Fri Jan 13 2006 22:36:57 )   

you are a total genius..

and i swear... if ennis and jack aren't reunited i would just die inside.


Re: There's a powerful line in the Proulx story...   
by - yaadpyar 3 days ago (Sat Jan 14 2006 05:14:37 )   

UPDATED Sat Jan 14 2006 05:16:32
It's fairly clear in the short story and maybe less so in the movie, that Lureen was going through the motions of telling the "story" of Jack's death. She didn't start-out a gold-digging materialist, but I think she had nothing left by the time Jack died.

She slowly died inside, much the way Alma did, upon finding out that her husband wouldn't/couldn't be the man she wanted, and in fact, never was the man she thought. She hardened into a shell of the Lureen we first meet, her cold exterior protection against the ultimate emptiness of her life.

Her conversation with Ennis about Jack is so full of unspoken thoughts and feelings on both sides, both of them fighting against what they know or suspect. Fascinating the paralells between Ennis & Lureen: both with hardened exteriors, neither able to fully embrace him, both willing to let so much remain unsaid and unknown in their relationship, neither demanding of Jack what he so desperately wanted to give, each crippled emotionally and hobbling along until Jack's death presents them with a reality they can no longer avoid...


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - naun 3 days ago (Sat Jan 14 2006 06:28:47 )   

UPDATED Sat Jan 14 2006 06:33:45
Another literary (albeit not classical) connection that occurred to me. I first mentioned it in another thread, but this seems like a good place to repeat it and expand on it a little.

There's a scene in the movie -- and the same elements are in the short story -- where Jack and Lureen are at the tractor showroom, years after their rodeo days. Jack is outside trying to sell a tractor (the infamous "Versatile" tractor), while inside the office Lureen does the accounts. This scene reminds me of Yeat's poem "At Galway Races", these lines in particular:

We, too, had good attendance once,
Hearers and hearteners of the work;
Aye, horsemen for companions,
Before the merchant and the clerk
Breathed on the world with timid breath.

So Jack and Lureen have been reduced in middle age to being "the merchant and the clerk". But it's the rest of the poem that resonates:

Sing on: somewhere at some new moon,
We'll learn that sleeping is not death,
Hearing the whole earth change its tune,
Its flesh being wild, and it again
Crying aloud as the racecourse is,
And we find hearteners among men
That ride upon horses.

Here are more of the themes and images from Brokeback: the singing, the moon, the dream of expressing one's nature free from social constraints, and perhaps also the idea that death will not finally part the "hearteners".

Maybe coincidental, maybe not.

Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - austendw 3 days ago (Sat Jan 14 2006 07:21:40 )   

the singing, the moon, the dream of expressing one's nature free from social constraints, and perhaps also the idea that death will not finally part the "hearteners".

And perhaps Lureen has a sudden realisation that Jack had experienced something of this, when she learns on the phone that Brokeback had a far greater meaning for Jack than she had imagined, a significance that Jack had never shared with her.


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - yaadpyar 3 days ago (Sat Jan 14 2006 07:43:13 )   

UPDATED Sat Jan 14 2006 07:57:23
And perhaps Lureen has a sudden realisation that Jack had experienced something of this, when she learns on the phone that Brokeback had a far greater meaning for Jack than she had imagined, a significance that Jack had never shared with her.

So true - her realization that not everything Jack said was just unrealized fantasy. The struggle that we see in both Lureen and Ennis during the phone call, each trying to keep their composure in their seperate grief, is this amazing power struggle for Jack's memory...who knew him better, whose memories were longer, who buried him, who knew the true story. What is revealed and concealed by each to the other.

From Ennis's call, Lureen finds out that Jack's life was real in ways she didn't know - that he was a dreamer, but not just a dreamer. And Ennis finally has to acknowledge that Jack wasn't just a dream of his own to tuck away in his mind and heart, making space for it in his life only as he wished...


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - CaseyCornelius 3 days ago (Sat Jan 14 2006 11:07:39 )   

UPDATED Sat Jan 14 2006 11:30:05
nene2:

Yet another intriguing take on that final line, but I can't help but see it as more than an everyday emotional expletive.

I'm maintaining an interpretation with other posters in the discussion who see Ennis's final "Jack, I swear --" as a voicing of commitment and eternal love.

flashframe777 in a post
(thread deleted)

above which eloquently says [quoting another poster?]:
"And I think this is part of what Ennis is swearing to Jack - swearing that he will always be true to their sacred love, swearing that he will never forget, swearing that their love love was true, and swearing that their love will live on in every moment of love Ennis experiences."

Another disucssion is with naun on the Jack and Ennis - Lake Scene and a Unique Camera Move thread:
(REPOSTED)

where both of us see Ennis's voicing of 'I swear' as a response to Alma, Jr.'s affirming that she has [at the age of 19, the same age Ennnis first loved Jack] found someone who can state his love and commit in marriage to her. The vow she is planning to state in marriage elicits a similar response from Ennis towards Jack. It has been stated several times in these threads that Ang Lee was intent on making this last scene redemptive.



Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - nene2 3 days ago (Sat Jan 14 2006 14:02:48 )   

UPDATED Sat Jan 14 2006 14:22:32
CaseyCornelius:

Thanks for you comments. I don't think there is any way to know what Proulx or the screenwriters meant by "Jack, I swear" - unless somehow we could ask them. Proulx's original text adds ". . . though Jack had never asked him to swear anything and was himself not the swearing kind." Which blows my expletive theory. On the other hand, that seems untrue, for wasn't Jack constantly trying to get Ennis to swear his love, make a commitment? Forgetting the short story, the effect for me of "Jack, I swear" in the film, which after all must stand on its own, is simple, provocative ambiguity. Maybe that's the way it was meant to be. I am more bothered by what happens afterward. The screenplay states that, after saying "Jack, I swear," Ennis "closes the closet door [and he] looks out the window, at the great bleakness of the vast northern plains." He doesn't do that in the film. I wish he had, for I wanted something more than a fadeout on the closet door frame, with a window to the side.

I've seen BBM four times, savor that lateral camera movement at the lake each time. It's stunning for it's one of the few camera movements in the film - causing some posters to compare Ang Lee to John Ford, who never moved his camera at all, never. As you pointed out, one sees movements like that in the films of Antonioni and especially Bergman, and I think they imply that the camera (the film maker, the viewer) is analyzing a person, trying to focus, understand him, despite the obstacles in the foreground. Lee saved his most dramatic scenery and that single, conspicuous, dizzying camera movement for the "showdown" scene at the lake, which is the dramatic center of the story. Interestingly, Proulx was unhappy with that aspect of the screenplay for in her short story she placed the dramatic center in the motel. She asked Lee to respect her original, but he would not and she gave up on the project. When finally she saw the film she says she was relieved and delighted, for she realized that, in the film at least, moving the dramatic peak to the lake was perfect. Film is not literature is not film is not literature, etc., etc.

Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - CaseyCornelius 3 days ago (Sat Jan 14 2006 15:32:34 )   

nene2:

This last post of yours raises a number of points, to one of which I have an immediate response.

I believe the final two shots DO show Ennis looking out the window. The penultimate shot is of his hand fixing the photo on his 'ceremonial effigy'/altar to the memory of his and Jack's relationship.
And then, as I recall, the closet door is pulled into 'our eyes'/the camera - ie. Ennis's point of view - and wipes across the screen to the left, 'lifting off the screen' as it were much like a transparency or superimposition, to reveal the open window behind it. It directly justaposes the ceremonial image of the idealized photo of Brokeback on the postcard with the reality of the open window - 'the great bleakness of the vast northern plains'.

Could the final shot showing both the closed closet door and the open window not be a filmic interpretation of Proulx' final sentence - "There was some open space between what he knew [the open window] and what he tried to believe [the hidden ceremonial altar] --"? Given your familiarity with Antonioni I'm sure you can appreciate this very Antonioni-esque justaposition of symbolic images within the frame.

Another poetic reference comes into the daylight after having nagged at me in my dim memory from the Proulx story with the continuation of this same sentence - "--but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it."
It echoes T.S. Eliot's lines in The Hollow Men --
"Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow."

I'll have to work with this as a sentence from the opening of the paragraph of the story,
"The wind booms down the curved length of the trailer and under its roaring passage he can hear the scratching of fine gravel and sand."

reminds me of the earlier line in The Hollow Men as well
"--quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rat's feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar".

But that's for another discussion.


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - JadziaDragonRider 3 days ago (Sat Jan 14 2006 15:47:05 )   

What an amazing post. I am not up on my European classical lit or drama but I enjoyed this post nonetheless. I do want to assert, that I read Jack's father differently. I don't know if he was mollified by Jack's death or what but I think there was greif and regret. He's not stupid. He knew that these men Jack mentioned were lovers I think. I think in those final scenes he might have transferred some of his feelings of guilt over Jack's fate onto Ennis as if to say "If you had come up here with Jack, he wouldn't be dead." I think it was in hte actor's delivery. He's not witholding the ashes to punish Jack even in death I think he's regretfull and angry that his son is dead and on some subconcious level he blames the man who could have saved him. He wants his boy to be in the family plot. If it was about being indifferent to Jacks' memory I think he would have left the ashes with Loreen, and if he didn't have some regret he would have refused Ennis entrance into his home.

[TOoP/Bruce]

Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - nene2 3 days ago (Sat Jan 14 2006 15:59:34 )   

I still don't like the last scene. But if the majority does, that's what matters. And I respect Lee's vision.

I will ponder your references to Eliot. BTW, that italicized preface to the short story was not in the original New Yorker publication. Proulx added it later.

What is your take on the four-note guitar theme that is heard loudly and prominently during the final scene? It is underscoring something . . . but what? And why on the CD is that music called "The Wings"? The fact that the music is a waltz, in 3/4 time, also kindles all kinds of thoughts in my mind.


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - flashframe777 3 days ago (Sat Jan 14 2006 16:14:36 )   

UPDATED Sat Jan 14 2006 16:23:59
Nene2 - the four note guitar theme that opens the movie (not The Wings).

Oh, I've thought about this. For me, it's an abandoned, abused soul crying out. The sparseness of the notes underscore that sensation we all have had of feeling small and insignificant in a vast universe. The shot we see first is multi-layered mountain range at dawn. It's a divided soul calling to its twin flame - and it's the flame answering back.

"You bet." --Ennis del Mar


She did NOT, by the way, add it later! The New Yorker   
by - rvognar01 3 days ago (Sat Jan 14 2006 16:25:43 )   

Editied it out! She restored it in "close Range," and McMurtry and Diana used it...

"You come back and see us again"--Jack's mother


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - mlewisusc 3 days ago (Sat Jan 14 2006 16:25:56 )   

nene2,

I THINK the preface was originally submitted but the New Yorker editors deleted it.

". . . the single moment of artless, charmed happiness. . ."


Do I repeat myself? very well, I repeat myself   
by - rvognar01 3 days ago (Sat Jan 14 2006 16:28:57 )   

UPDATED Sun Jan 15 2006 09:00:36
...after his wife invited him in?


Proulx wrote the original story with the two italicized paragraphs, and the New Yorker edited them out; they also edited out some other things==all of which she restored in "Close Range." All of which were used in the screenplay (which is not to say every word she wrote was in the screenplay, or that nothing was added to the screenplay). OR to the movie, after 3-4 takes...

And that's all I have to add to this magnificent thread that Casey Cornelius started with an essay that would get an A in any grad school film coruse...which he might also teach...nuan, jmghallagher, all them guys...



"You come back and see us again"--Jack's mother


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - nene2 3 days ago (Sat Jan 14 2006 16:32:00 )   

Thanks, mlewisusc. I didn't know that. Interesting . . .


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - nene2 3 days ago (Sat Jan 14 2006 16:35:56 )   

flashframe777:

But why is the guitar music that ends the movie called "The Wings"?

The word "wings" occurs a few times in the dialogue, but I don't get the connection. Maybe they just had to call it something . . .


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - flashframe777 3 days ago (Sat Jan 14 2006 17:07:33 )   

UPDATED Sat Jan 14 2006 17:10:31
Nene2

I think Casey talked in an earlier post about this.

Proulx writes: He had staunched the blood which was everywhere, all over both of them, with his shirtsleeve, but the staunching hadn't held because Ennis had suddenly swung from the deck and laid the ministering angel out in the wild columbine, WINGS folded.

The last scene is of the bloody shirts, the talisman which reunites them, a result of last day on Brokeback.

Perhaps Santaollala made this connection, and was inspired to name the song, "The Wings" because of this.

That's the best I got.

"You bet." --Ennis del Mar


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - nene2 3 days ago (Sat Jan 14 2006 17:15:31 )   

Also, when Ennis attends Thanksgiving dinner back at Alma's, Alma Jr. asks him to tell about when he rode broncs in the rodeo. Ennis says:

"Short story, honey. Only 'bout three seconds I was on that bronc, an' the next thing I knew I was flyin' through the air. Only I wasn't no angel like you and Jenny, and didn't have no wings . . ."


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - flashframe777 3 days ago (Sat Jan 14 2006 22:15:35 )   

Nene2

Jack, Jenny and Alma Jr. are described as angels with wings. Those are the people that Ennis holds closest to his heart.

"You bet." --Ennis del Mar


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - CaseyCornelius 3 days ago (Sat Jan 14 2006 22:42:45 )   

UPDATED Sun Jan 15 2006 06:41:45
flashframe and nene:

It might be a tad obvious but is not the 'angel' image / Wings also suggested by the out-spread sleeves of the shirts hung on the nail from the closet door?

Ennis did hold his daughters - the other angels - in his life dear in paternal love, but he held Jack dearest in devotional love.

I've read through numerous threads discussing the 'ministering angel' quote as a foreshadowing of Jack's death. But, I've not seen anybody bring up the reference to Act V, sc. 1 of Hamlet. Laertes is at his sister Ophelia's funeral and chides the priest who does not wish to give her any more church rites of burial as she was a suicide -- "I tell thee, churlish priest, A minist'ring angel shall my sister be
When thou liest howling."

Don't know if Proulx intended an allusion to Hamlet, but it is the one that springs most readily to mind in literature. AND Ennis IS concerned with proper burial rites at the end of the story, much as Laertes. Jack will continue to act as Ennis's ministering angel, providing comfort through the medium of the 'winged' shirts, much as he did in life.

Another allusion suggested by that same 'wrestling' scene and the wounding which Jack accidentally inflicts on Ennis might be to Jacob wrestling with the Angel in Genesis [not a ministering angel, however]. A bit of a stretch, but much as the Angel cannot prevail over Jacob and is forced to wound him in the thigh to gain release, so Jack symbolically wounds Ennis since he cannot prevail in disarming Ennis's sullen spirit at their parting.



Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - rvognar01 3 days ago (Sat Jan 14 2006 22:46:53 )   

UPDATED Sat Jan 14 2006 22:50:46
How could I have forgotten...Ophelia committed suicide--maybe, and that's why the priest wouldn't give her fuill funeral rites.

"You come back and see us again"--Jack's mother


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - flashframe777 3 days ago (Sat Jan 14 2006 22:51:09 )   

"I tell thee, churlish priest, A minist'ring angel shall my sister be
When thou liest howling."
_________________________
Beautiful association Casey.

Hmmm....what are the chances Proulx has ever read Shakespeare? :-)

"You bet." --Ennis del Mar


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - austendw 3 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 02:34:36 )   

Could the final shot showing both the closed closet door and the open window not be a filmic interpretation of Proulx' final sentence - "There was some open space between what he knew [the open window] and what he tried to believe [the hidden ceremonial altar] --"? Given your familiarity with Antonioni I'm sure you can appreciate this very Antonioni-esque justaposition of symbolic images within the frame.

That's very well argued, Casey. I like the way the closet door acts as a screen, which temporarily obscures the reality through the window. This shrine to Jack may be hidden (it's literally "in the closet"), but when opened, it hides and counteracts the bleakness and emptiness of the world outside.



Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - starboardlight 3 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 02:52:09 )   

YES! that reference to Hamlet is amazing. Well observed Casey.


Re: Do I repeat myself? very well, I repeat myself   
by - shrinkrapt 3 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 03:24:27 )   
   
Wow, what a treat, after all those hordes of trolls. Don't have time for it now, but I've saved this to hard disk for later perusal.

People, I swear....no film has ever drawn me back to the theatre time after time. I don't WANT to see it again, but I need to (to check out these classical references, apart from anything).


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - Jamessemaj12 2 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 05:43:41 )   

What an astute and profoundly moving comparrison that is. I felt the same things but never made the analogy with DIDO and AENEAS from Virgil's Aeneid which was one of my most beloved stories from Greek Mythology class long ago in High school.
I also believe and have done so since first reading the story years ago that the Jack , I swear is a pronouncement of the guilt that Ennis feels and his proclaiming had he known he would lose his love he would not have let him go but would have found the courage to do things differently.
I was away when this thread first appeared but someone called my attention to it, Thank you again .
I find it so fascinating that this story has all the elements of Greek tragedy even without the comparrison to Aeneid yet is set in modern western civilization.

Should anyone care to read The Aeneid by Virgil here is a link but be forewarned if not familiar with the classics of Greek literature it can be an arduous read but so very worth it.

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~joelja/aeneid.html



"But all in all, it's been a fabulous year for Laura and me." BUSH. after 9/11 attacks, 12/20/2001


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - newyearsday 2 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 07:54:40 )   

So glad this thread has stayed vibrantly alive and that more and more insights keep coming. We're up to 87,000 posts on this board, but this one is right up at the top IMO. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

Thank you.


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - jlilya 2 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 08:52:40 )   

Did everyone notice the blood red nail polish on Lureen's finger as well as on her nails in the the phone call with Ennis. Do you think that this is Ang's way of saying that Lureen has "blood on her hands"? It was pretty obvious, that little bit of nail polish on her finger, must have some meaning. And this may be a shot in the dark but, a possible allusion to Lady Macbeth? I'm not all that well read, so maybe someone who is, might pick something up on this point.
Also, what's the deal with Lureen being almost "ghost" white except for the nails. Maybe to set them off more, or maybe that she is only a spectre of her original self, the girl full of fire and life. At any rate a sad commentary on what she's become. Any feedback appreciated.

Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - flashframe777 2 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 09:04:00 )   
   
Casey and James and Austendw and everyone else,

The works by authors of old like Homer, and the masters like Shakespeare and Dickens and the like lead me to think of the creative impulse making its first imprint on man. Maybe great storytelling will always refer and reduce to the great works by these artists because it's the original flame.

When I attended school in Austin, I used to stop into the building that houses the first photograph ever taken. It felt like a religious pilgrimage because I was in such awe. I thought whatever the spirit of film and light may be, whomever it may be, it made it's first physical statement to the world in this piece of art. Was there something I could gain by being in its presence? Don't know, but it couldn't hurt.

Yes, I love your reference to Shakespeare Casey. Everyone worth his or her metal drinks from the source.

"You bet." --Ennis del Mar


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - starboardlight 2 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 10:02:25 )   

i didn't take the nail polish to mean that. i never believed that she had anything to do with Jack's death. they were to emphasize the artificiality of her life.

there have been a couple of really well discussed thread to the question of her clothing and hair. don't have time to find them just now though. To me, they represent her growing distance from her life, her husband and he child. We first see her full of life, dressed in red with long lose hair. She's passionate, dangerous and reckless. She is wild abandonment. But as she settles into accounting books for her daddy, that quality drains from her. Her hair begins to take on unearthly and unnatural structures and also drains of color. She falls into a routine (crunching numbers) and she neglect her marriage and child (her forgetting to tend to his educational need). We see the life visually drain from her. At the end, she's all white. The only colors are in her lipstick and nail polish, and those are messily applied.


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - starboardlight 2 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 10:16:39 )   

just a minor correction. Virgil was a Roman. Despite the mythology behind Romulus and Remus, Virgil portrays Aeneas is the father of Rome. It's been years since I read it but the basic story is that Aeneas, a Greek, was sent by the gods to start a new nation, Rome. Druing his journey, he met, fell in love with, but could not stay with Dido. Julius Caesar claims a direct descendent of Aeneas.

[TOoP/Bruce]

Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOI   
by - henrypie 2 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 10:35:55 )   

Any thoughts on Ennis's name, Del Mar? He's the one who's never traveled more than round a coffee pot to find the handle, who is earthbound and beige, who comes from Sage; yet he has the name Del Mar -- of the sea. I'm don't think Twist or any of the other names is crying out for exegesis, but Del Mar stands out as a deliberate contradiction to his character and, I can't escape it, a reference to Jack -- blue....


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOI   
by - mlewisusc 2 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 10:42:57 )   

"Ennis" is an old Gaelic word meaning "Island." Thus, "Ennis del Mar" is "Island (surrounded by) the Sea (water)."

Lots can be dug out of this - insular, established, immovable while all around him moves, and if you go up further in this thread and take Water in the film to represent the passage of time, time and change pass around Ennis, perhaps altering his form and appearance, but not moving him along at all . . .

". . . the single moment of artless, charmed happiness. . ."


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - stevme 2 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 11:37:08 )   

Beautifully written. thank you.


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - juliaz3 2 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 12:58:46 )   

I'm with Nene2 (in her post from Friday) in that I interpreted and still interpret Ennis' "I swear" as more of an exclamation. I've often used "I swear" in this way. But I do see that it can be interpreted both ways, as the colloquial exclamation and a promise or vow of some sort, which was probably the author's intention.

To keep this wonderful thread alive here are some comments and a couple of questions:

I took Jack's father's statment "I know where Brokeback Mountain is" to mean "I know all about my son's sexual preference, you ain't fooled me". He almost uses it as a euphemism, like the man who hired them to work Brokeback later taunts Jack with the phrase "stemming the rose".

Jack is the first one to make a sexual reference, when he speaks of the wolf he saw with "balls as big as apples". Later Jack returns to the fire after taking a piss and proudly "flicks" the rodeo belt buckle he wears (a trophy) to show it off, which I also interpreted as a come-on gesture. These two comments/actions to me revealed their growing imtimacy.

As Jack and Ennis talk around the fire, a few hours before their first sexual encounter, Jack says something like "sinners like us" and Ennis says he isn't a sinner because "I haven't had the opportunity".

When Ennis returns to the mountain and finds the dead sheep that was killed by a predator, he is overwhelmed by emotion. The second time I saw the film I connected the image of the dead sheep with the image of the murdered gay man that Ennis saw as a child. I think the Ennis was o.k. with what had happened between he and Jack until he sees the dead sheep. Did anyone else connect those two images? (Sorry if this is obvious and has already been discussed.)

Did anyone else think Jack must have loved Ennis for his laconic wit? Ennis is a man of few words, but boy, he can snap off some funny remarks.

I think in the end Ennis finally realized that he had been surrounded by love (Alma, Jack, Cassie, his daughters) and just never saw it or allowed himself to feel it. He had been orphaned, and then left to fend for himself. He married a nice girl who he was comfortable with, probably for the security and companionship, but we know he didn't feel passionate love for her. He never expected to find love or be loved, even when it was right there waiting for him.

Question: The film or the projector was dimmly lit during that first sex scene between Ennis and Jack. As Jack tries to kiss Ennis, does Ennis hold his eyes tightly closed, like he doesn't want to give in but also doesn't want it to stop? It seemed that way to me but I couldn't see it well.

Question: Why does Alma crack during the Thanksgiving dinner? That puzzles me. She has moved on and has a nice husband and a secure home. Is she still in love with Ennis? Has she held in her anger at him for so long that finally something about him being there and getting attention and love from his daughters make her so angry that she has to finally confront him? I didn't notice if there was anything that set her off, it just seems to happen.


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOI   
by - nene2 2 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 13:15:08 )   

UPDATED Sun Jan 15 2006 13:20:05
"One tender moment's reprieve from loneliness can illuminate a life."
(Last line of Stephen Holden's review of BBM in TNYT, 9 December 2005)


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOI   
by - juliaz3 2 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 13:23:06 )   

Excellent!

On second viewing (which certainly won't be my last) I noticed that Jack lies somewhat to Ennis when he tells Ennis about going back to Brokeback the next summer to look for him. He just says that Ennis wasn't there so he left, but he doesn't tell Ennis that the foreman ridiculed him and threw him out. I enjoyed watching Jake G. in that scene the second time I saw it because you see so much in his eyes and his attitude. Jack is a cocky guy, but the foreman cuts him with his words, and yet not even that can stop Jack from asking for Ennis. His body language and eyes show that although he is embarrassed, he still yearns for Ennis and will do anything for one word about his whereabouts.

The second time I saw this film I was somewhat bummed by my friend's reaction to it. He is a gay man who enjoys films and I thought this one would get him the same way it got me. However, his main comment afterward was, "Well, I thought I would see more of their intimacy. I mean, to me it seemed like they could just have been good buddies. Two straight guys horsing around. I guess that the filmmakers were scared to show what they really needed to to make it seem like they were lovers."

That so disappointed me. I think we saw many intimate moments. My friend assured me he didn't expect to see more "sex scenes", but that he thought that, especially after the Brokeback scenes, the meetings between the two men lacked intimacy. I could agree somewhat -- excepting of course their reunion after four years! -- but he so completely focused on what he expected and then did not see that I think he missed the rest of the story. There is a weight of political expectation on this fim that unfortunately doesn't allow some people to view it purely as a film.

Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - jnaomi 2 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 14:12:23 )   

[Casey] Okay, I won't hesitate in asking my two questions. Clearly, you have wonderfully full, comprehensive thoughts on so many subtleties in this most beautiful film.

One, I wonder if you have any thoughts on the actual choice of the name "Brokeback" for the mountain. Is it a real mountain? Is it a reference to "having a broken back" aka broken spirit?

And, I haven't seen anyone question John Twist "sturdy" statement "I know where Brokeback is" as possibly a way in which John Twist has known some (I don't know how to word this) gay experience himself. Perhaps he had gay feelings so very repressed, it made his understanding and rejection of Jake's gayness so extreme and so harsh. I mean, if a person says, I know where such and such a place is, it usually means they have been there themselves. Maybe? Any thoughts, any one?

"Buy the ticket take the ride." Hunter S. Thompson[/quote[
   
      
Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOI   
by - flics 2 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 14:34:57 )   

The name Ennis can also be derived from the name Aengus, which means in Old Irish "sole or only choice". I admit that the surname "Del Mar", 'of the sea', would certainly connect the name Ennis strongly with the Irish 'inis', which means island - and which is a town in the south of Ireland, in County Clare.
Ennis being the only one for Jack is also appropriate. Both work beautifully.


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - juliaz3 2 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 15:09:26 )   

UPDATED Sun Jan 15 2006 15:11:22
In the thread above I mentioned that I think Jack's father saying "I know where Brokeback Mountain is" means quite clearly that he knows about his son's sexual orientation. He almost spits it out. It's a bit of a mirror of the scene in which Jack is confronted by the Brokeback foreman when he returns the next year to ask for a job, and to ask about Ennis. The foreman tells him that he knows the boys were "stemming the rose".

I don't think it's meant to suggest any repressed homosexuality in Jack's father.



Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOI   
by - starboardlight 2 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 17:03:03 )   

UPDATED Sun Jan 15 2006 17:04:10
However, his main comment afterward was, "Well, I thought I would see more of their intimacy. I mean, to me it seemed like they could just have been good buddies. Two straight guys horsing around. I guess that the filmmakers were scared to show what they really needed to to make it seem like they were lovers."


the lack of intimacy was very deliberate, not because the film makers were scared, but because Ennis is scared. Ang Lee very brilliantly mirror the emotional journey of the film with those of Ennis. When he find joys, his fear and paranoia rise and undercut them. Ang Lee does this for us as well. We begin to feel joy at their consumation in the first tent scene, and that joy is undercut with the discovery of the dead sheep. We want to indulge in their intimacy in the second tent scene or in the reunion scene, but Ang Lee brings back paranoia with Aguirre spying on them and with Alma discovering them. Ennis and Jack are frustrated because they're not allowed to experience fully the joy of their union, and we in turn are not allowed the same. It's a big risk for Ang Lee to take, cause it could alienate some audience members, but for the most part, it paid off. We get just as frustrated as Ennis and can empathize with his lose.


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOI   
by - asphodelli 2 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 20:56:30 )   

You know, that's what i thought too... i mean, these people are grieving and trying not to show it- especially Mr. Twist, which makes him appear cold. He seemed to have almost a sort of "it ain't right, but i won't say it's wrong" attitude toward Ennis. Bitterness and regret seem forefront, possibly because he was not as involved in his son's life as he could have been, and now there's no chance.


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOI   
by - mightypog 2 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 21:06:08 )   

That's too bad your friend was dissapointed by the lack of intimacy. I can see his point of view, in that it was pretty demure. I have read others express a similar critique.
My thought is, more sex would have taken the film out the romance genre. We don't necessarily expect movies about the great romances of heterosexual people to be terribly torrid. The emphasis is the romance, not the sex. In fact, if you think about it, there's a tendancy to shy away from too much physicality in romance movies, (Ever After, Ladyhawk, Pretty Woman, The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love, The Thorn Birds, for example)I think to avoid cheapening the characters and focus instead on the purity of the bond, a purity that transcends the body, even, presumably, death.
In the case of Ennis (Love the idea of Ennis as Aeneas!!!)and Jack, the idea, I think was to focus on what the relationship became after it got physical. I read a gay writer point out that being gay is not about who you have sex with, it's about who you fall in love with. I think that's a point the movie also made, one that more physicality might have diminshed.
Further, even if Ang Lee did chose to avoid more graphic sex in order to not drive off the mainstream altogether, I think he wasn't out of line.
One of the reasons I celebrate this movie so much is that it is utterly, 100% pioneering. It broke new ground. It presented a serious romance between two men to the American public. Increments are perfectly honorable. What an incredible achievement!
Kudos to Casey. What a wonderful discussion. Just what I was looking for. I have spent two days reading through the posts here before posting myself. How nice to be able to go past the infantile trolling by some of God's more joyless creatures in some other threads and just come here. Wonderful analyses, all.


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOI   
by - CaseyCornelius 2 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 21:13:54 )   

UPDATED Sun Jan 15 2006 21:17:07
henrypie:


The post from mlewisusc following yours gives a great exegesis of Ennis del Mar.

I know that Annie Proulx sent Jake Gyllenhaal an inscribed copy of Close Range:Wyoming Stories letting him know that the name Twist referred to the strength of thigh and butt muscles which a rodeo rider needs to stay on a bull or bucking bronc. Appropriate, no[?], given his tenacious holding on to the dream of a life with Ennis through all of their difficult life together.

Alma being Spanish for soul, heart, or sweetheart is fairly common knowledge.
Interesting, isn't it, that we never learn her maiden surname? She's presented both in the story and the film as if she's had no existence prior to her life with Ennis [we never learn anything about her family] and always been true to the core in her love for Ennis -- which might explain her eternal sense of betrayal which explodes in the Thanksgiving scene.


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - CaseyCornelius 2 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 21:34:55 )   

UPDATED Sun Jan 15 2006 21:37:30
juliaz3:

Appreciate the thoughts in your post.
I absolutely agree with you that the shot of the dead sheep resonates with Ennis as the image of the dead, desecrated corpse of Earl does later in the film, though it's something we discover later. At the point in the film at which he sees the sheep I believe he himself is feeling an inarticulate guilt and intense shame around the previous night's explosion of sex with Jack. But, we can definitely connect the dots when we later see the hideous evidence of homophobic hatred which Ennis's father subjected him to at the unconscionable age of nine.

In the first night love-making with Jack, Ennis keeps his eyes open as far as I can tell - though he's so inebriated that one wonders what he's taking in.
The second night love-making definitely has Ennis closing his eyes and embracing Jack so tenderly, begining a relationship, according to Annie Proulx, in which Ennis will never embrace Jack face to face with his eyes open "because he [does] not want to see nor feel that it is Jack he [embraces]." Ennis even makes love to Alma this way as well. It's as if Ennis embraces both Jack and Alma as the hurt, emotionally arrested child that he is.

I believe Alma cracks during the dinner scene because she truly still loves Ennis at her core and cannot stand the eternal betrayal and the lie he is making of his emotional life. Earlier at the Thansgiving table she reacts with a derisive look at Ennis as he tries to charm and be the happy daddy for his daughters who obviously adore him. I don't think Alma wants to deny Ennis their love and respect, but wants him to own up to what and who he really is to both himself and herself.


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOI   
by - mlewisusc 2 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 23:22:44 )   

Casey, was Alma's last name in the story Beers? If so, any thoughts there?

". . . the single moment of artless, charmed happiness. . ."


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - flashframe777 2 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 23:29:06 )   

More about the musical score:

I wrote previously: Oh, I've thought about this. For me, the music speaks of an abandoned, abused soul crying out. The sparseness of the notes underscore that sensation we all have had of feeling small and insignificant in a vast universe. The shot we see first is multi-layered mountain range at dawn. It's a divided soul calling out to its twin flame - and it's the flame answering back.

I was referring to the music on the sountrack named "The Opening". The guitar strums, then the next instrument echoes the same notes as a shared sentiment. This music plays in three specific places - right before Jack & Ennis first meet, a second time when Ennis dry heaves in the alley, however, only the last note, the guitar strum is heard - then Alma appears. The next time we hear it is when Jack reunites with Ennis after 4 years with that glorious hug.

"The Wings" is played whenever a situation in the story is oppressive and unyielding. We first hear it after Ennis tells Jack why two men can't live together, that there are no reins on their relationship. That segues into Ennis and Alma having that round robin of an argument outside by the swings. Finally it's played at the end of the movie with a shot of Ennis' closet in juxtaposition to a picture view window. (Okay, I have to admit that I didn't get that until tonight - to choose between staying in the closet or coming out into the world. It's obvious, but I love it when things are hidden on the surface). When one is blocked, surrounded by four walls and no windows or doors to escape, like Jack and Ennis, the only way out is to rise above, and for that a pair of wings would certainly come in handy.



"You bet." --Ennis del Mar

[TOoP/Bruce]

Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOI   
by - mlewisusc 2 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 23:32:11 )   

This is probably gonna be a little corny, BUT

Brokeback Mountain reminds me powerfully of another impossible romance film, Casablanca.

I avoided Casablanca for years because it was supposedly such a "great" film.

Then I saw it and fell in love with it. And let's be clear, it's generally a pretty cheesy bit of filmmaking. But brilliant also!

Why? The fact that they don't end up together! But my post is really in response to the level of intimacy shown between Rick and Ilse. There's damn little. When Ilse goes to Rick's office, determined to get the letters of transit at any cost - her body, or Rick's death - after threatening to shoot him, she finally falls into his arms on the sofa . . . and . . . after a fade out . . . they are up again, tuxedo pressed, Rick is standing at the window and smoking - and Ilse's hair looks great . . .

I think this isn't just the restraint of the period but also the restraint of great writing - we want them to HAVE each other, fully and completely, but the filmmakers deny us this, because the characters are going to be denied or are denied - and we eat it up. We watch the stuff over and over. We can't resolve it in our heads to the point where we can "Let be, let be." We post on this board. Good God, I hated The Thorn Birds, but I was completely drawn to it - the forbidden love. Watched the whole damn thing. It's just true - good art usually comes from great pain.

Did I just solve the ache of the whole Universe or what?

". . . the single moment of artless, charmed happiness. . ."


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOI   
by - flashframe777 2 days ago (Sun Jan 15 2006 23:46:29 )   

Did I just solve the ache of the whole Universe or what?
______________________________________________________

Yes you did Prometheus. See you same time tomorrow.

"You bet." --Ennis del Mar


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - austendw 2 days ago (Mon Jan 16 2006 02:24:16 )   

But I do see that it can be interpreted both ways, as the colloquial exclamation and a promise or vow of some sort, which was probably the author's intention.

I rather like this way of looking at it. There are twin perspectives at work here. For Ennis, a man of few words, seldom even aware of his own feelings, let alone able to express them, "I swear" seems to be his frustrated, strangled attempt to say something to Jack. Everything he should have but never said? His undying Love? His sense of guilt and grief? Who knows what? But for us, Ennis's unprecedented need to to express himself, the yearning to communicate to Jack, gives those words the depth and quality of a solemn oath.

I think that in her story, Proulx actually performs that magical transmutation of meaning when we pass from the colloquial "Jack, I swear" to the deeper "Jack had never asked him to swear anything...." Now that's mastery.




Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...'
by - austendw 2 days ago (Mon Jan 16 2006 03:33:28 )   

I think that if the name Ennis del Mar signifies anything it's an allusion to John Donne's "No man is an island, entire of itself". Ennis is what no man is, or should be: an "Island of the Sea". He eventually confesses to Jack: "I'm nothing, I'm nobody" (or something like that).

(Sorry if this has been mentioned umpteen times before: it's the inevitable result of delayed trans-Altalntic release, leaving me groping to catch up with the hot topics on your side of the pond.)


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOI   
by - juliaz3 1 day ago (Mon Jan 16 2006 06:10:35 )   

Yes, Ennis breaks down and says to Jack, "It's because of you that I'm nowhere and nothing."


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOI   
by - juliaz3 1 day ago (Mon Jan 16 2006 06:19:24 )   

Excellent points! I tried to talk to my friend in this way, but he was too intent on needing to see more obvious physical intimacy (he was careful to tell me he did not mean SEX). He really missed the more truly intimate moments, they way the men said each other's names, the roles they took on, that sort of thing. For example (I think I remember this correctly), the time we are shown Ennis arriving at their meeting camp and he has brought two horses for them to ride. You hear him say, almost in voiceover, "Look what I brought." He delights in making their time together enjoyable.

It was only at my second viewing that I heard Ennis tell Jack he'd quit many jobs to make sure he was free to meet with Jack. Then it made sense to me when Alma said (paraphrase), "I'd be happy to have more of your kids if you'd support them." I thought, hmm, I guess she means emotionally, but something didn't seem right. Then later I realized, oh, he's quitting jobs all the time, probably with flimsy excuses, and it exasperates her. It really struck me that Ennis, who was no quitter, would quit those jobs. That was a real show of his commitment and his need for Jack.


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - juliaz3 1 day ago (Mon Jan 16 2006 06:28:43 )   

Casey, thanks for your response! Good points about Alma's reaction. And you're right that it's the second night they are together that Ennis keeps his eyes tightly closed. I realized that a while after I made my post.

When does everyone think Ennis is happiest in the film, at his most "alive"? To me, it seems he was happiest at the time of their first reunion. He is so vibrant and nervous with excitement as he waits for Jack to show up. And after they've shared that long kiss, he bursts in and is jumping to go out and spend time with Jack. We see Ennis happy and relaxed later, but to me he never seems so alive and vital as he does when they first see each other again. The fulfillment of that long desire, a dream Ennis had thought would never come true, and then the postcard and the buildup to the wonderful moment of being reunited with that one person he could be truly himself with. Makes me think of the Beatles lyrics, "One sweet dream, came true today."


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - mlewisusc 1 day ago (Mon Jan 16 2006 07:49:57 )   

I presume, although we only see the briefest glimpses of it later, that he is this *alive* every time he meets with Jack out in the wilderness, however often (2 of 3 times) in a year.

". . . the single moment of artless, charmed happiness. . ."


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOI   
by - naun 1 day ago (Mon Jan 16 2006 08:34:40 )   

Yes, Ennis breaks down and says to Jack, "It's because of you that I'm nowhere and nothing."

Doesn't this remind you of Marlon Brando's "It was you, Charlie ... I coulda been a contender" speech in On the Waterfront?


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOI   
by - naun 1 day ago (Mon Jan 16 2006 08:59:15 )   

Alma being Spanish for soul, heart, or sweetheart is fairly common knowledge.

Casey,

In the accent of the region the name is pronounced "Elma", which you could parse as a contraction of "El madre", "The mother". I doubt this is accidental, in light of your earlier observation that, besides being the mother of Ennis' children, Alma's relationship with Ennis is also essentially maternal. In one scene, Ennis actually calls her "Ma". As I mentioned in another thread, Alma's character and predicament are not unlike those of the mother in Ang Lee's earlier film, The Wedding Banquet. Both women are conventional, profoundly nurturing types who find themselves in emotional circumstances they cannot understand.

You also connected the nature of Ennis' emotional relationships, including his relationship with Alma, with his habit of embracing, or being embraced by others from behind. It occurred to me the other day that the shirts follow the same configuration.


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOI   
by - quiplash 23 hours ago (Tue Jan 17 2006 05:52:27 )   

UPDATED Tue Jan 17 2006 16:15:36
This is one of the best threads of movie comment I've seen in years. *bump*

Heath Ledger as ranch hand Ennis Del Mar deserves an Oscar for Best Actor (although Philip Seymour Hoffman could give him a run for his money). When Ledger was on-screen he was mesmerizing. Never missed a beat. During my second viewing of Brokeback Mountain I made a point of watching Heath Ledger's face during the first half hour of the movie, and he reminds me of nothing so much as a frightened child. The only times I ever saw him with his face relaxed were when he was with Alma during the first four years, when he was with his daughter Alma Jr., and of course many of the times he was with Jack. A glimpse of the Ennis that could have been.

There's that one scene at the very end of the movie that caught me off guard, which has been discussed here earlier. There's a shot of the Brokeback Mountain postcard pinned to the closet door of Ennis' trailer, which is then closed, revealing in its place the view out his trailer window: flat plain. Ennis has literally given up his mountaintop experience (and the potential to continue it) for a sad, flat life. This movie is all about giving up on your happiness and your dreams because of fear of what others may think, an issue of particular resonance for gay men my age (41) or older.

Oops...I think I just repeated myself. Sorry!


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOI   
by - austendw 20 hours ago (Tue Jan 17 2006 08:40:44 )   
   
There's a shot of the Brokeback Mountain postcard pinned to the closet door of Ennis' trailer, which is then closed, revealing in its place the view out his trailer window: flat plain. Ennis has literally given up his mountaintop experience (and the potential to continue it) for a sad, flat life.

Nicely put.


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - jnaomi 18 hours ago (Tue Jan 17 2006 10:14:32 )   

BUMP (though I once had a boyfriend who took the life out of art by parsing every "a" and "the" into some literary allusion.... I find this thread different and remarkable to wallow in)

"Buy the ticket take the ride." Hunter S. Thompson


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - bandia19-1 17 hours ago (Tue Jan 17 2006 11:24:50 )   

I agree, and I thought that switch was subtle and beautiful. Ennis changes the order of the shirts, with his own on the outside, as he accepts finally his love for Jack, and it is his small way of consoling Jack, showing him that he cares, that he will protect his memory and think of him always. Ennis takes the initiative for the first time in his life and holds Jack the only way he now can.

I also thought that the scene in the closet where he hugs the shirt and tries to breathe Jack in was heartbreaking...he is holding the shirt to him as if Jack is in it, face to face, the way Ennis couldn't hold Jack in life....now Jack is gone and he wants to hold him and show him his love, his pain, face to face and its too late...


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - starboardlight 17 hours ago (Tue Jan 17 2006 11:32:53 )   

We see Ennis happy and relaxed later, but to me he never seems so alive and vital as he does when they first see each other again. The fulfillment of that long desire, a dream Ennis had thought would never come true, and then the postcard and the buildup to the wonderful moment of being reunited with that one person he could be truly himself with.


there's a been great discussion about the shirt colors, earlier here as well as in other thread. I'd like to point out that in the scene where Ennis sends the "You bet." card, he wears a shirt with blue and brown pattern. The two colors are united and weaving in and out of each other. Just a small detail that means so much.

[TOoP/Bruce]

Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - starboardlight 17 hours ago (Tue Jan 17 2006 11:36:54 )   

I believe Alma cracks during the dinner scene because she truly still loves Ennis at her core and cannot stand the eternal betrayal and the lie he is making of his emotional life. Earlier at the Thansgiving table she reacts with a derisive look at Ennis as he tries to charm and be the happy daddy for his daughters who obviously adore him. I don't think Alma wants to deny Ennis their love and respect, but wants him to own up to what and who he really is to both himself and herself.


I'm kind of conflicted about this. Alma has been hurt and betrayed by the lie, but I wonder if she quite understands it completely. At the sink, she starts by suggesting that Ennis marries again. That struck me as odd. If she felt that, by being with Jack, Ennis was being unfaithful, why would she suggest he go on to hurt some other woman in the same way?


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - bandia19-1 17 hours ago (Tue Jan 17 2006 11:49:10 )   

I wanted to add that Ennis uses the hat again in the scene where Aguirre spys on them....he and Jack are having fun, chasing, wrestling and fall togehter into a kiss...With no reason to hide up there, Ennis seems to "naturally" cover their faces with the hat....even in their intimate solitude, he was hiding behind it...



Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOI   
by - tomwspoon 16 hours ago (Tue Jan 17 2006 12:14:11 )   

My god that's the most beautiful thing I have ever read! And to think it appeared in a review of Brokeback Mountain - how appropriate and wonderful!


Re: I SWEAR I said this 10 days ago--but it's not there.   
by - wmcecongirl 16 hours ago (Tue Jan 17 2006 12:55:14 )   

I was hoping someone would bring up the speed at which Ennis and Jack's relationship progressed. I just saw the film for the first time today and I absolutely loved it. Like your friend, I was struck by the speed at which this relationship developed and found myself wishing that there had been more build-up--until Jack met Lureen and within 5 minutes they had jumped into the backseat of a car and the timing for their relationship seemed perfectly normal. Then I found myself feeling guilty for applying two different standards to the question "how fast is too fast?" based on the sexual orientation of the people involved in the relationship. We're conditioned to expect a man and a woman to meet and "hook up" and maybe even fall in love within 5 minutes of film, but we aren't willing to make the same leap of faith for a relationship between two men (or two women). Shame on us!

Of course since Ennis and Jack are our main characters, we would *expect* the focus of the film to be on the relationship between them and less on their relationships with the supporting cast members, but that didn't keep me from being mad at myself when I recognized my own double standard.

On a side note, thanks to everyone who has posted here. It's so nice to see intelligent discussion on these message boards for a change and I've really enjoyed your thoughts.


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...'
by - Ellemeno 15 hours ago (Tue Jan 17 2006 13:02:09 )   

UPDATED Tue Jan 17 2006 13:03:19
About Alma: "She's presented both in the story and the film as if she's had no existence prior to her life with Ennis [we never learn anything about her family]"

We do learn that she has a sister close enough to call to come get the kids when Junior breaks the peanut jars.

Ennis thought he'd never had such a good time, felt he could pawthewhiteoutofthemoon. [/quote]


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - henrypie 15 hours ago (Tue Jan 17 2006 13:05:34 )   

This thread is to most threads as Brokeback Mountain is to most movies.


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - aronnyc 13 hours ago (Tue Jan 17 2006 15:11:19 )   

Great analysis. I might add that in The Divine Comedy, Virgil is the one who greets Dante in his search for his love, Beatrice.

"Hesh wants some sex!" - Sealab 2021


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - quiplash 13 hours ago (Tue Jan 17 2006 15:29:14 )   

Readers of this thread may be interested in reading an excellent essay posted on the LiveJournal blog of destina (which has also been posted to the LJ community gay_cowboys :-)

Symbolism and symmetry in Brokeback Mountain
http://www.livejournal.com/users/destina/326931.html



Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - claud_higgins 13 hours ago (Tue Jan 17 2006 15:50:19 )   

I saw this film 3 hours ago and have just read this entire thread. It broke my heart all over again and I actually cried more reading people's heartbreaking interpretations than I did seeing the film.

Of course, that could be because I'd feel like an idiot sobbing in the cinema.


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - quiplash 13 hours ago (Tue Jan 17 2006 15:51:51 )   

Thank you CaseyC. I must confess I am pleasantly flabbergasted at the high level of discussion, thought, and insight taking place in this one thread.

I do have a favour to ask: You mention the "Jack and Ennis-Lake Scene and a Unique Camera Move" thread. Instead of me browsing through hundreds of threads to find it, would it be possible to post a URL that leads directly to that thread. It would save me a lot of time and I'd be very grateful, thanks.

Actually, one post with a list of all the links to threads with this kind of discussion would be wonderful. I wish the forums had keyword searching :-(

Anyway, I'm having a blast. You can feast on Brokeback Mountain for *days*.


Re: Jack's Father   
by - banjoist 12 hours ago (Tue Jan 17 2006 16:07:49 )   

Metaphor, symbolism, allegory, they all pass right over my head sometimes, so this is a great way to see the film as more than just a narrative.

I have to agree and to disagree about John Twist. Ennis asked Jack about walking down the street and people looking at you just like they can tell. (sorry I can't give the exact quote).

When John Twist talked about Jack had always coming up there talking about how he would bring Ennis back to the ranch to "lick it into shape", and then later it was Randall Malone, but he never came, he knew what Jack was about. And he was insulted that Jack would think his ranch, his work, needed whipping into shape.

John Twist didn't want Jack to learn bullriding because he didn't want Jack to be a competitor. It is in the tone of his voice. It is in the expression that Jack always thought he was too good for them.

John Twist was angry, but he did not want Jack there, and, in fact had never wanted Jack around.

Just one man's opinion. Not real eloquent today, but I wanted to get it out there.


Re: Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS   
by - austendw 2 hours ago (Wed Jan 18 2006 02:29:49 )   

UPDATED Wed Jan 18 2006 02:53:01
Well, Alma doesn't know for sure that Jack is still on the scene. Even if he is, she probably thinks that since she and Ennis have had two children and did have some sort of sex life, Ennis "ain't no queer" (and many people on these threads would agree). As Jack appears to have been Ennis's only male lover, she may think it as a temporary aberration. Indeed, I'd imagine Alma views Ennis as an innocent victim of "Jack Nasty", that "predatory" man-siren, who tempted him to such wickedness, who gave him his taste for the sort of sex "that don't make too many babies". So Alma probably thinks that, on balance, being married offers some degree of "protection" against Jack or similar temptations. You know, the love of the right woman (which Alma wasn't) may be able to "cure" him.

[TOoP/Bruce]

by malina-5     6 hours ago (Fri Dec 15 2006 04:23:33 )   
   
oh... this is beautiful and stunningly appropriate to the final scenes, as is the whole comparison to Virgil:

<<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". >>

I read a fragment of this months and months ago, in response to one of our ubiquitous queries re: the 'I swear', but the whole passage, though one couldn't imagine Ennis uttering so many words, is just so... fitting. It fits like a glove.

"This ain't no little thing that's happenin here", all this very multi-faceted culture that's growing up around the BBM experience. I'll always be a little envious and regretful that I wasn't here right at the very beginning, so I'm grateful to have all these classic threads reposted. I know that's looking backward instead of forward, but it still makes you a 'true oracle' for real in my books, TOoP.


...it's easier to change the sheets/ than change what's in your head
- The Ne-er-do-Wells

[Brown Eyes]

Bumping for the sake of happy nostalgia!  But, also because the idea of BBM and Greek Tragedies or Classical references has come up again recently in Open Forum.

[Front-Ranger]

I was just reading in Mark Asquith's Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain and Postcards that Jack's shooting of an eagle the year before echoes the same act by Hercules, who was punished for the shooting by his lover Hylas disappearing, leaving Hercules with only a shirt for remembrance. I'll have to read the story of Hercules and Hylas in depth!

[TOoP/Bruce]

I was just reading in Mark Asquith's Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain and Postcards that Jack's shooting of an eagle the year before echoes the same act by Hercules, who was punished for the shooting by his lover Hylas disappearing, leaving Hercules with only a shirt for remembrance. I'll have to read the story of Hercules and Hylas in depth!

What an interesting observation!  I will have to read more about that as well!

[Monika]

I was just reading in Mark Asquith's Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain and Postcards that Jack's shooting of an eagle the year before echoes the same act by Hercules, who was punished for the shooting by his lover Hylas disappearing, leaving Hercules with only a shirt for remembrance. I'll have to read the story of Hercules and Hylas in depth!

wow, very interesting