Life and this movie are messy

[Brown Eyes]

I wanted to ask everyone, why was Ennis shown spitting (and rather violently at that) just when Jack is backing his truck out of the driveway (such as it is) in the post-divorce scene?

Heya Friend,

This is a good question.  I think, like Mikaela said that it's about frustration.  But, I think it's multi-leveled frustration. (Surprise, surprise).  First I think he's frustrated/ freaked out over being surprised.  I think he's frustrated with himself and feels awful about sending Jack off (his hung head... the concerned way he says "Jack" with that reall intense look in his eye).  And I think he's frustrated plain and simple that he can't hook up with Jack that weekend (even if he's not about to agree to live with Jack at the moment).  I'm sure he's sort of mad that he's got the girls that weekend (eventhough, at the same time, they provide a handy excuse for not running off into the sunset with Jack that very minute).

[Luvlylittlewing]

Great posts, everyone.  We mentioned all the spitting, I touched on the unpleasant smells.  I'm really interested - any other messy things can you think of in this beautiful movie?

[nakymaton]

I don't see any of the spitting (even John Twist's) as showing contempt or disgust. Within most of the scenes, I think they serve more as a sort of nonverbal punctuation than anything else. (Something a little more final than a period, less emphatic than an exclamation point.)

And I think the spitting serves to give a rhythm to scenes that, without dialogue, might otherwise seem static. (Maybe they spit because tap-dancing would seem out of place.)

The trouble with symbols (and non-verbal stuff) is that people read them very much based on their own experiences. So if spitting is considered rude or disgusting in your culture (and in this case, I would say that American women have a different culture than American men), it's easy to read it as a sign of disgust or contempt. (I keep thinking about the scene in Dune where the protagonists are ready to take offense when somebody spits in front of them, only to be told that in that culture, spitting symbolizes giving a gift of the body's water, and that it's a great honor for someone to spit in front of them.)

[Meryl]

By nakymaton
I don't see any of the spitting (even John Twist's) as showing contempt or disgust. Within most of the scenes, I think they serve more as a sort of nonverbal punctuation than anything else. (Something a little more final than a period, less emphatic than an exclamation point.)

I like that description of it.  Much of the time, the act of spitting adds emphasis to what has just been said.

We mentioned all the spitting, I touched on the unpleasant smells.  I'm really interested - any other messy things can you think of in this beautiful movie?

Blood gushing from a nosebleed onto two shirts. 

[serious crayons]

Tell you what, there have been so many times when I have initially dismissed something as not possibly having any symbolic significance. Front-Ranger's thread about buckets comes to mind, an observation about the meaning of buckets in various scenes corresponding to Ennis' situation at that point, that as the thread unfolded also entailed the symbolism of coffee pots, which represented Jack's situation, and I think eventually led to animals and maybe fans and ...

Anyway, I remember seeing the bucket thread title on the forum index for days and days and not reading it, thinking, "Yeah right ... buckets?! I think we're getting a little carried away here." And then I finally in a moment of boredome checked it out and ... oh. my. god. Every single example she mentioned worked perfectly as a metaphor for whatever it was in the  scene it was in -- all different but connected, all with undeniable significance -- waaaayyyy too much to be accidental. I think my first post on that thread started with the word, "Whoooeeeee." I couldn't believe it. But once I thought about it, it made perfect sense.

That was where I learned my lesson. I never dismiss an anything as just an anything until I really examine it closely. (Or, well, to be perfectly honest, I still do that sometimes -- and still usually realize later, once I look hard enough, that I was wrong.) Now, obviously there's plenty of room for argument. Nobody knows what the filmmakers' intentions were, and we can read all kinds of things all kinds of different ways. And it's even possible that sometimes it really does mean nothing, that something's just there because it's there.

So some people here say characters in the movie spit just because people spit in real life. So OK, as a test, can anyone think of a spitting instance in the movie in which the context of the scene demonstrably does NOT include contempt or dismissal or something pretty close? Anyone remember a time when someone spit when they were happy or cheerful, as they might easily do in real life?

In any case, no need to be evangelistic about this. Symbolism and metaphor is supposed to enhance your appreciation of the movie. If it doesn't work for you, that's perfectly fine ... obviously you enjoy the movie anyway or you wouldn't be here. But I would hesitate to discount what others see in them.

[Mikaela]

I'm really interested - any other messy things can you think of in this beautiful movie?

Those wet sheep that (especially) Jack keeps carrying in his arms, dragging around or holding on to on his horse in scene after scene on the mountain - I've been thinking to myself that they must give his clothes, his blue shirt in particular, a very distinct patina of greasy stains and harsh smell.

Not that the boys would notice it much, they'd be so used to it. Or if they did, they'd think it smelled of making honest money, I suppose. Just like the Del Mar bedroom's smells and noises, right after Junior is born, reminded Ennis of life's continuance. I've always loved that in the story. 

Jack did sure notice the cat piss smell, though.... 

And yes, I'm a city girl, I can't deny that.....

Anyone remember a time when someone spit when they were happy or cheerful, as they might easily do in real life?

It struck me that the counterargument to this one might be: Anyone remember a time when they were happy and cheerful? There are so relatively few of such scenes that it kind of makes sense that the infrequent spitting, even if completeyl non-symbolic, would happen in tense or unhappy scenes.
I've not changed my opinion - I still feel certain the spitting is there for entirely intentional reasons. But this discussion has nevertheless opened my eyes to there being no certainty in that. 

[nakymaton]

Truth is... I could never keep straight who was a bucket and who was a coffee pot; that symbolism never worked for me either. I think the bucket-kicking/coffee-pot-dropping was also more to give a sort of rhythm to scenes; many of the background actions in the movie (whether water flowing or people riding horses or wind blowing) have a continuous feel to them -- they are the sort of thing that could lull a person to sleep easily. Many of the themes in the score have a flowing sort of feel to them, as well. Things like kicking a bucket or help pull the audience's attention toward Ennis.

That's what they do for me, anyway. They set a time and place, and they give the characters things they can interact with.

As for dirt: I'm not going to get into a symbolic discussion of dirt. I happen to like dirt; to me, dirt = real.

[fernly]

Far as symbols go....I've heard more than one writer at readings or seminars respond to a question about a symbol by saying something like....no, in that particular case the symbol wasn't intentional, but sure it works that way and they wish they had thought of it consciously.
I'm in the camp of believing a lot of the symbols in the movie were intentional (Jack using the axe and Ennis the saw, for example). There are plenty that I don't think were (the water sloshing out of the buckets as Jack carries them, for instance) but they still make sense to me personally, and the analysis y'all have done on them has certainly enriched my experience of the film.

[Meryl]

Now, obviously there's plenty of room for argument. Nobody knows what the filmmakers' intentions were, and we can read all kinds of things all kinds of different ways. And it's even possible that sometimes it really does mean nothing, that something's just there because it's there.

When something is working and the juices are flowing, many, many things can fall into place that are just "right."  As Jeff Wrangler pointed out so tellingly a few posts above:

Tell you what. The truth is, sometimes I feel that if someone sat down and deliberately planned everything in this film in which someone somewhere has seen symbolism or significance, we'd still be waiting for the film to be made.

I tend to agree with this poster over at IMDb, nonon99 99, who wrote this in my "Brokeback and the Number 3" thread:

Often the creator himself doesn't know more about his work than us do. Artist who has sufficient traning just creates automatically in a way he feels comfortable with, as Ang Lee said 'I do it from my heart'. But that the artist isn't conscious doesn't mean systematic things in a work do not exist. This phenomena always happenes in classical music. Academic music analysist will figure out the structure, harmornic system, etc of a piece of music in a very meticulous way while the composer himself is more guided by his ears. This is a mystery of all great arts.

I'm sure the final product is a combination of Ang Lee's genius and meticulous attention to detail and what nonon said, that much of it is unconscious.  This film feels like it has bubbled up out of the mass psyche to speak to an infinite number of aspects of soul and heart.  It is a mystery, and I think that none of us are sorry about that.  It gives us so much to explore and discuss and wonder at!  Thousands and thousands of posts, and we're no closer to a consensus, other than that there's a whole lot there to love. 

[Front-Ranger]

I think we have to go back to the original story. Annie Proulx wrote that the story went through more than 60 edits! That's a lot of edits for a short story! Watching the movie, I noticed some things that looked like they might be symbolic: the colors, the pickup trucks, the star on the barn door, soup and beans, etc. When I went back to the story to see if they were there too, sure enough, I found almost all of them! Some motifs are more fully developed in the story than in the movie and vice versa. But you can definitely see the director's mind at work. He and his team (I'm thinking Diana Ossana was very much involved in this too) sat down with the story and diagrammed it out, with instructions to the wardrobe people, the props people, the set designer, etc. as to how the themes could be carried out in their respective areas. The script shows this process in evolution--it has some themes that are less developed than in the movie and other themes that were discarded later.