Film-Ennis vs. Story-Ennis and Film-Jack vs. Story-Jack

[TJ]

"Quicksilver" is mercury, which is a liquid metallic element. "Quicksilver" is also used as a verb meaning to "coat (mirror glass) with an amalgam of tin." Real silver has been used as mirrors, too.

When I was a kid, we had fun playing with quicksilver, holding the liquid in our hands, and sometimes we got to play with little toys where the quicksilver moved around inside where the plastic was clear. Quicksilver seeks its own level like water does flowing down hill.

When I read all of the things Annie Proulx wrote or said in interviews about her characters and how difficult it was for her to get them exactly right to her own satisfaction, I think that she did the best she could for the reader and that is certainly okay with me.

[TJ]

Heath Ledger was not "Heath Ledger" in his role as Ennis Del Mar. And, IMO, he did a good job of interpreting the role.

Jake Gyllenhaal, in real life interviews on talk shows, seems to have a certain innocence which a Jack Twist would also have.

[Brown Eyes]

LOL, Hey Jeff.  I think we were probably googling that Proulx quote at the same time.

Yup, I love that Proulx was so happy with the movie too.

[JfT]

Proulx: " He got inside the story more deeply than I did. All that thinking about the character of Ennis that was so hard for me to get, Ledger just was there. "


Kind of refreshing for a writer of AP's stature to say that.

[Jeff Wrangler]

LOL, Hey Jeff.  I think we were probably googling that Proulx quote at the same time.

Yup, I love that Proulx was so happy with the movie too.

Great minds, eh, what? 

You were Googling while I was rifling through a VERY LARGE pile of hard-copy print-outs. ... 

[serious crayons]

Personally, I'm glad I saw the movie before I read the story.  One thing I find strange when I read the story even now is that I don't at all feel the same level of emotional connection with the written characters.  I love Annie's writing and phrasing, etc.  But, I've never felt as connected to story-Ennis or Jack.

Me neither, though I read the story first. My reaction was, Wow, good story. I was amazed by the writing, and of course I found it sad. But I wasn't particularly emotionally affected by it. I know my response is far from universal -- that many people love them both or even prefer the story -- but I've always wondered why I responded so differently to the two. Usually, if anything I prefer the written version.

The best I can come up with is that I have a harder time identifying with the story characters. As I mentioned before, I find the colorful grammar and colloquialisms distancing and a bit kitschy -- to me, they make Story Jack and Ennis seem too much like "characters" and less like real people. Whereas Movie Jack and Ennis virtually ARE real people. Also, their movie personalities are much more vivid and specific. The story characters seem to me much closer to interchangable -- I don't sense the deep psychological complexity and individuality that I do in the movie versions.

Oh, and one more factor: Proulx's scrupulous avoidance of sentimentality. I don't like sentimentality myself, and we've talked about how restrained and low-key and unsentimental the movie is. In fact, that's what I love about it; it is never the least bit maudlin or sappy. But it's not quite as austere as the story, and I think that helps me connect to it.

But that's just me. Obviously a lot of people -- the filmmakers, people at BetterMost -- were able to find things in the story that eluded me.

[TJ]

I created a new discussion thread sort of related to what is in the discussion here but, with the emphasis on the published in book form of the story. I even created a poll to go with it.

http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php?topic=1225.0

It is called The Book (original AP complete short story), The Message & Its Impact.

It is rather difficult for some of us who have read the complete short story and have seen the movie and liked them as stand-alone works of art. But, then again, some of us, me included, see some important differences betwen the two of them. 

[TJ]

When I read and re-read Annie Proulx's story, I am reminded of the way that many Native American oral tradition stories are told to listeners.

They usually begin with words to this effect, "Now this is the way that it was told to me." It is almost like a person who knew Ennis Del Mar or even an Ennis told her the story and that is why even in the narrative, the expressions are like a native born Wyoming person wrote them.

She did admit that she is not gay and, in words to this effect, wrote it from a POV of a straight woman trying to figure out a man suffering from internalized homophobia.

Oh, I use "in words to this effect," because I heard and even typed them hundreds of time when I was a senior-clerk typist for lawyers in the US Army when I was in Vietnam and working in the HQ Staff Judge Advocate (SJA) Section office. "Words to this (that) effect" means what was said on the witness stand was an indirect quote or interpretation of what was actually said. In the US Military court system, "words to this effect" were treated as though they were exact quotes of what was actually said.

Indirect threats were also considered equal to direct threats when talked about in a court-martial.

Ennis indirectly threatened to kill Jack (or at leasted seemed to be one) by what he said to Jack at their last time together. He did not say that he would kill Jack; but, Jack treated what Ennis said as direct threat instead.

Ennis did not say, "Jack, if I find out that you are having sex with other guys, I will kill you." I think he meant, "If I find out that you have been having sex with other guys, it will probably after someone else has killed your for being queer. And that's why I am afraid for you."

[Jeff Wrangler]

I am reminded of the way that many Native American oral tradition stories are told to listeners.

Tell you what, TJ, it was interesting to read this comment of yours. While I'm not familiar with Native American oral tradition stories, a long time ago in a post back at IMDb I had mentioned that when I read the story, I have the feeling of listening to a story being told to me.

At the risk of reopening an old debate, this also plays into why I believe Jack was murdered rather than died in a tragic accident. I once wrote that I felt the story had a "mythic" quality to it, and the way the story was structured, and this "as told" feeling that I get when I read it, make me feel that it's almost required that Jack die by tire iron, just as Ennis imagines and always feared, just as the rancher that Ennis's father forced him to see.

But note that I say this being fully aware that Annie Proulx was deliberately ambiguous--she doesn't tell us definitely one way or the other, and neither does Ang Lee. Perhaps this is just the way I complete the story for myself.

[TJ]

But note that I say this being fully aware that Annie Proulx was deliberately ambiguous--she doesn't tell us definitely one way or the other, and neither does Ang Lee. Perhaps this is just the way I complete the story for myself.

Because of what seems to have been Annie Proulx using an extraordinary writing style for Brokeback Mountain that seems to be somewhat different from what I have perused in her other works, skimming through them, her being deliberatly ambiguous to what really happened to Jack makes me think that he might never have been in any accident or even gay bashed and murdered.

(IMO) Ang Lee said, in words to this effect, "Everything that Lureen Twist told Ennis Del Mar on the phone was a lie."

While nothing was mentioned about the death of her father in the movie, the screenplay writers and the movie transferred some of Lureen's in-the-book personality to her father. The only known farm and equipment company boss that the book's Jack Twist worked for was Lureen herself. In the book, until the death of her old man, they got no financial assistance from him whatsoever.

I don't think Jack would have even married her if her father had not owned that company. From what Jack said in the reunion scene in the motel room about his father-in-law and what he said later about nothing going the way that he planned it, I get the impression that Jack had hoped her father and company would sponsor him as rodeo bull rider. Jack figured that if he "married money," he could get everything he needed to be a real rodeo cowboy.

In the movie, on September 24, 1967 Jack arrives in Riverton, Wyoming in a brand-new two-toned pickup truck; but, in the book, he is still driving the old green pickup on June 24, 1967 when he pulls in to park near the laundry below the apartment.