LONG answer for those who wonder what all the fuss is about
by latjoreme (Wed Dec 6 2006 07:50:56 )
UPDATED Wed Dec 6 2006 07:53:16
I've seen so many posts lately from people who think Brokeback Mountain is so-so or flawed, and who don't understand why others here are so excited about it. The answer is complicated and long, so those threads often dissolve into bickering, frustrating for both sides.
A few months ago, some friends of mine said they had seen Brokeback Mountain and thought it was only OK. I respected these people's opinions, so I wrote a long email explaining why I think it's great. I thought it might be helpful to post some excerpts here, for anyone who is curious. Sorry it's so long -- there's actually so much more I could say.
Some people think it's slow, or that not much happens, and all I can say is that it is the most complex and subtle film I've ever seen. Every scene, almost every line, just about every frickin moment of the movie carries much more meaning than appears on the surface.
It's full of so many metaphors and symbols and subtexts that I couldn't begin to inventory them all here. Trust me, there are tons of them, involving buckets, coffee pots, birds, snow, water, wind, guns, the moon, a bear, a dead sheep, colors, trucks, shirts (yes, obviously, but the two at the end aren't the only ones), closets, beans, elk, rodeos, windows ... I could go on and on. Obviously I don't have space to explain all of these, but here are a few examples:
Water symbolizes something about the relationship between Ennis and Jack. When they go up the mountain, they cross over a stream, and cross it again on the way back down and into society. Jack carries overflowing buckets of water to Ennis. When they're together, they're usually by a river. When they go camping after reuniting, they plunge naked into the water. When we see Ennis' wife Alma, she is often washing something in tap water (i.e., artificial, "domesticated" water, in contrast to natural river water). When Ennis rejects Jack's suggestion that he move to Texas, he drops the bucket he's washing into the river and it starts to float away -- he's letting go of his chance for happiness. When their time together on the mountain is about to come to an end, it snows -- their relationship is frozen. Near the end, the night before their big argument where Jack seems on the verge of breaking up, he says, "It's gonna snow tonight for sure" and the next day there is snow on the mountains. As years go by, the water they camp by slows down from rushing rivers until, at the end, they're by a still lake -- their relationship has stagnated. In the flashback where Ennis' dad takes him to see the murdered body of Earl, it's an arid desert-like area, the horrifying absence of love.
Wind symbolizes Jack. When Jack walks into Aguirre's trailer, the fan above Aguirre's head, previously motionless, suddenly begins spinning. "Look what the wind blew in," Aguirre says. When Ennis is sitting on the bed, obviously thinking about Jack, Alma is imploring him to move to town and says, "You don't want it to be so lonely, do you?" there's a pause as Ennis looks sad, and we hear the wind outside howl. In the end, when Jack is dead and Ennis is talking to his daughter in his lonely trailer, we see a big fan in the picture.
Dialogue: Near the beginning, Ennis warns Jack that his horse has a low startle point, Jack assures him there's not a filly that could throw him, but eventually it does -- just as Ennis turns out to have a low startle point and essentially throws Jack, too. When Jack complains about beans and Ennis doesn't want to break the rules by eating a sheep, it shows how they deal with society's rules. (They compromise by killing an elk, and at the end Ennis, trying to placate Jack, suggests they could get a cabin and "kill us a nice elk.") When Ennis says his dad thought rodeoers were all f'ups and then Jack horses around and falls, Ennis laughs and says "I think my dad was right" -- just as he thinks his dad was right about homosexuality. When Ennis is spreading tar and the yakkety coworker says his wife keeps telling him he's going to break his back on the job, it prompts Ennis to turn and stare wistfully off into the distance, recalling Brokeback and his summer with Jack. When Lureen remarks that "husbands don't never wanna dance with their wives," the subtext is, and that that's not all they don't wanna do with their wives. "Our husbands don't have a smidgen of rhythm between them," replies the other woman, LaShawn, whose husband is also gay. A few minutes later, Jack wonders why women powder their noses "just to go home and go to bed," as if to say nothing ever happens there.
Countless scenes in the movie echo or mirror each other. At the beginning, Ennis travels at dawn, in a truck crossing a mountain scene from left to right, carrying a paper bag holding a couple of shirts. At the end, Ennis travels at dusk, in a truck crossing the same mountain scene from right to left, carrying a paper bag holding a couple of shirts, as if 20 years later, he's still where he started. When they leave Brokeback and part for the first time, they stand at Jack's truck and Jack says he's going to go visit his folks, shortly after which Ennis walks away and collapses. At the end, in the scene of their big argument, they stand at Jack's truck and Jack says he's going to go visit his folks, shortly after which Ennis collapses. At the drive-in, Ennis and Alma are watching a movie and Alma grabs Ennis' hand just the way Jack did in the tent, only she puts it on her pregnant stomach. There are lots of other examples.
Even the tiniest details are meaningful: in one kitchen scene, where someone has a secret, there's a bag of bread in an opaque wrapper. In a later kitchen scene, where the secret is revealed, the bread is in a clear wrapper. At the Twist's ranch, we see an abandoned houselike outbuilding that could represent Jack and Ennis' would-be home together. In scenes where Jack and Ennis are more open to each other, they wear lightweight (or no) clothes; in scenes where they're closed off from each other, heavier clothes and jackets. When they're apart, Ennis, missing Jack, always wears Jack's trademark blue but when he's with Jack he retreats to his own typical tan. In the bus station, a pair of men in cowboy hats, one black (like Jack's) and one white (like Ennis') are standing at the counter buying tickets -- a suggestion of the life they could have had together.
These examples barely scratch the surface. There are dozens and dozens throughout the movie. As a former literature major, I picked apart classic novels for metaphors and symbols and subtexts, and I can tell you that The Great Gatsby is no more multilayered than this. Of course, you don't have to notice all or any of these things to enjoy the movie, but they subtly and maybe subconsiously underscore meanings and enrich the experience.
But the greatness of the movie isn't based entirely on its symbolism. It's a masterpiece all around: wonderful writing, beautiful cinematography, lovely music, astonishing acting. Heath Ledger's portrayal of a closed-off, emotionally damaged, tumultuously emotional introvert -- a man struggling to reconcile his contradictory impulses -- is exquisite, despite the spare dialogue, despite the fact that few of his lines express what he's really feeling or thinking about. It's a character I've never seen in a film before; the stoic taciturn iconic Western cowboy who, in direct contrast to the classic Hollywood cowboy, is not a rebel or rugged individualist but just the opposite: the ultimate tragic conformist.
Another thing: Restraint. This story could so easily have become mawkish or maudlin. It never does, despite all the powerful emotions -- somehow it manages to be both heartwrenching and unsentimental. Another thing: its ways of creating empathy. When Ennis is bathing in the background, why doesn't Jack turn and look, which we know he's tempted to do? Because when he doesn't, we're forced to go into his mind and figure out how he's feeling. Another thing: Subtlety. The first couple of viewings, I didn't know how Jimbo the rodeo clown knows Jack is hitting on him -- then I noticed the eye contact. Took a few more times before I noticed the same kind of eye contact going on between Jack and Randall, at the charity ball. A few times before I spotted Ennis leaning out to check Jack out as he rides off, then immediately catching himself and making himself turn away. A few times to notice the galaxy of emotions that crosses Ennis' face when he asks his daughter if her fiancee loves her (now that he has come to understand the importance of love and how much he has missed). Another thing: its ambiguity. Nothing is spelled out. We're given no obvious answers about how Jack died. Or what Ennis means, exactly, when at the end he says "Jack, I swear." Or whether Jack really would have left Ennis and gone off to ranch with Randall. Or why Alma never mentions having seen them on the stairs. Or at what point, if ever, Ennis comes to accept his own sexuality. The story draws us in, makes us think for ourselves, credits us with the intelligence to puzzle these things out on our own, allows us to come to all kinds of different conclusions depending on what we're looking for.
That's great art.
Keep in mind that I learned most of this stuff only after multiple viewings and much time on message boards discussing the movie with really insightful and observant people, who pointed out most of these things. I don't think anybody could come out from one viewing realizing all this. On the other hand, I did come out from my first viewing knowing I really loved the movie and wanted to see it again as soon as possible. It's touching and moving and sexy and poignant and heartbreaking and mysterious. But those are reactions that can't be defended in rational terms -- you either respond to the film or you don't. Many people are not swept away by it. (Luckily, most of those unconvinced viewers weren't film critics; the film won every major award up to the Oscars, reason in itself to find its Oscar bypass a little suspicious.)
Anyway, whenever I hear that someone doesn't love it, I also feel a bit sorry for them, because they're really missing out.
