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Brokeback Mountain

F

Flowerdk4

New Member
I have recently seen "Brokeback Mountain" with my son, who is 16 years old.

I think the film was very very good and they did a great job in portraiting the feelings and the situation the two men were in. Most of all, I thought it to be a great love story.
My son liked the film as well, thought it was very good.

When I talk to men about this film, they dont even want to consider watching the film. Only one guy I know have actually seen the film, and he liked it very much. Maybe a lot of men, have some kind of homofobi, since they feel this way?

I have read that the film should set new standard of how Hollywood will portray gay/lesbian in the future. And that it is up in the running for Oscars.

Anyone else seen the film?

Flower
 
All the reviews that I have read have been good. I very seldom go to the movies and usually watch them when they come out on video. I have not decided yet on whether I will watch it.
 
I'm not a great fan of westerns, but this one I would like to see. Looks like it could be something different. I just don't understand why men would be put off seeing it just because of a gay relationship. A relationship is a relationship.
 
I would also like to see this movie, and I agree that the shouldn't matter what type of relationship it is. Although I'm not knowledgable in gay-lesbian psychology, it seems to me that theoretically, a man-man, woman-woman, or man-woman relationship should all be virtually the same in strength.

I've heard nothing but good about this movie. A lot of guys I know refuse to see it too, but in high school the reason seems to be that they hate romance movies altogether, rather than homosexuality, because the kids in my school seem to be very understnading of such things.

I think it's really sad that men like the aforementioned 'homophobics' often don't want to open themselves up to new things, because homosexuality is becoming more and more of a reality in our world. Even if people disagree with it, they need to learn to accept it, because it's always going to be there. (Kind of like how I have to accept that idiot Bush's presidency...)

I'm sure this movie will get plenty of Oscar nods based on the glowing reviews and its possible revolutionization of Hollywood romance. I'm not all that interested in gay romance (I'm not interested in romance whatsoever), but since this movie seems to be Hollywood's first positive portrayal of homosexuality, it seems very interesting.

I don't think Hollywood is "liberal" (and neither is the media) just because it doesn't always swing in the way of conservatives and occasionally wants to introduce concepts to make the public more aware and accepting.
 
It doesn't come out (no pun intended :cool: ) here until February 3rd, and it's my boyfriend who is dragging me along to this one! He really wants to see it, and I'll admit that it looks interesting. I have heard nothing but good reviews about this movie and am looking forward to seeing it.
 
It certainly seems to be picking up all the nominations going. It's out this week in the UK, so I'll probably see it soon. I read the story a month or so back in preparation. At first I thought it moved a little too jumpily, in that Proulx doesn't use ten words when one will do, and never says anything she doesn't have to: but that's a problem of the reader, of me trying to race through it too quickly as I usually do. So once I got used to it, me and Brokeback Mountain got along just fine. The appearance of male intimacy is sudden and unexpected even when you know the theme, and the story at its end is as moving as you've been told, and the effect not diminished at all for the forewarning. I'm just glad
Ennis didn't get to scatter half Jack's ashes on Brokeback Mountain,
otherwise I would have been a hopeless mess. As it is I can't think of the recurring line 'if you can't fix it you've got to stand it' without tears springing up behind my eyes.

What I think is interesting about it (and more so when the film is widely seen) is how it brings the old story of forbidden love home to us. So often we read 19th century novels or films based on them, where the heroine and hero can't get together because of social mores which simply no longer apply, which can make the whole thing rather detached and dilute the emotional core. Here, we have something we can much more easily credit happening (ie the trials and tribulations of Jack and Ennis) even today, although the story sets it in the recent past, and less suspension of disbelief is required, and the force is greater as a result.
 
Shade said:
I read the story a month or so back in preparation.
Click to expand...

So did I, and because of that, I won't be seeing the movie in the theatre. I don't go to the movies often as there isn't a convenient theatre with decent seating around here. It takes a major effort to go see a movie, and I'm not willing to make that effort for this particular movie. Unlike many people who are boycotting this movie, it's not that I have a problem with the subject matter. Far from it. I have close gay friends, my favorite show was the US version of Queer as Folk and I'm actively working against the Massachusetts Family Institute.

I remember reading the story and enjoying it right up until
the point where you learn about Jack's death and Ennis' theory about whether or not it was truly the accident his father claimed.
I just don't know if I would be able to handle sitting there in the theatre watching that. I absolutely detest people who sit in movie theatres and sob loudly and I worry that this movie would do that to me. BTW, Shade, I totally agree with you about
Jack's ashes. I think that would have made the ending even tougher than it was.
I strongly recommend reading the story to anyone who is interested in seeing the movie. It was an outstanding story, published years ago in The New Yorker that I'm glad I had a chance to read. I was going to put the link here, but it seems to be gone. I suspect that it has been removed as the story is now being sold in hardcover in addition to being published in a number of anthologies.

So, in the end, I'll be waiting for this to come out on DVD. I'll buy it previously viewed when it is available on the cheap from my local shop. That way I can sit and sob in the privacy of my own home and at my own speed.
 
I read the story and thought it was wonderful, but I thought the movie was awful.

I think it's getting a lot of praise because people think the actors are "brave" for playing gay characters.

I thought the movie was overly long, and the little things that McMurtry added for the screenplay managed to hurt the story, not help it.
 
Michelle Williams, in yet ANOTHER queer film. I'm beginning to hope...i mean wonder about that girl!
I can not WAIT to see it. However, it doens't seem to be showing in any theatres here. Stupid prairies. I miss being in hamilton sometimes.
 
Prairie_Girl said:
Michelle Williams, in yet ANOTHER queer film. I'm beginning to hope...i mean wonder about that girl!
I can not WAIT to see it. However, it doens't seem to be showing in any theatres here. Stupid prairies. I miss being in hamilton sometimes.
Click to expand...

she's married to Heath Ledger and just had his baby not that long ago.
 
I saw the movie today and liked it very much. I am going to read the original story in the New Yorker using my complete New Yorker CD set. I am able to print out the story from the CD, and I am able to print to a virtual pdf printer from http://verypdf.com which is a handy little trick.

I am helping someone to research a school paper on this movie, so I hope to be writing and reading about it in some detail and depth.

Here are a few interesting links I have found so far. I am interested in the author of the short story as well as the movie version.



http://www.bartleby.com/65/pr/ProulxEA.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Annie_Proulx

E. Annie Proulx said:
Proulx has twice won the O. Henry Prize for the year's best short story. In 1998, she won for Brokeback Mountain, which had appeared in The New Yorker on October 13, 1997. (The story has since become an award-winning 2005 movie, directed by Ang Lee.) Proulx won again the following year for The Mud Below, which appeared in The New Yorker June 22 and 29, 1999. Both appear in her 1999 collection of short stories, Close Range: Wyoming Stories. Proulx was one of six authors B.R. Myers attacked in his "A Reader's Manifesto".
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brokeback_Mountain


If anyone is interested in some attempt at an in depth discussion of the movie and the short story, let me know.
 
Sitaram said:
I saw the movie today and liked it very much. I am going to read the original story in the New Yorker using my complete New Yorker CD set. I am able to print out the story from the CD, and I am able to print to a virtual pdf printer from http://verypdf.com which is a handy little trick.

I am helping someone to research a school paper on this movie, so I hope to be writing and reading about it in some detail and depth.

Here are a few interesting links I have found so far. I am interested in the author of the short story as well as the movie version.



http://www.bartleby.com/65/pr/ProulxEA.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Annie_Proulx



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brokeback_Mountain


If anyone is interested in some attempt at an in depth discussion of the movie and the short story, let me know.
Click to expand...

to help your friend, there's also a book out with the screenplay from the movie. It's called Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay. It's got the story, the screenplay and 3 essays about making the story into a film

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/07...f=pd_bbs_2/102-7624999-7060909?_encoding=UTF8
 
Thanks for the information, Venus.

I just finished viewing the original story in the New Yorker, and printing it to 10 pdf pages/files.

I am about to read it carefully, but just now, glancing quickly through it, I am impressed by how true the move is to various descriptive passages and dialogue from the short story, quoted verbatim.

I am reminded of the first time I looked through the book version of "Brideshead Revisited" by Evelyn Waugh, after having seen the 12 hour pbs production, and noticing how true the movie was to the novel.
 
The Use of Distance

The use of distance.

Both the story and the movie make good use of sight at a distance.

from the original story said:
During the day, Ennis looked across the great gulf and sometimes saw Jack, a small dot moving across a high meadow, as an insect moves across a tablecloth; Jack, in his dark camp, saw Ennis as night fire, a red spark on a huge black mass of mountain.
Click to expand...

This one sentence combines distant vision with a motif of darkness and light.

Jack is a black speck sometimes seen against a background of light. Ennis is a small but constant light seen in total darkness.

How do we see ourselves? How does the world see us? Do we see ourselves as others see us? If and when we finally succeed in seeing ourselves, shall we like what we see?

Is it possible to understand the entire story from this one sentence?

I do not think Ennis even begins to see himself or Jack clearly until after Jack’s death.

At face value, our microcosmic sentence is saying that Ennis sees Jack as a bug. Buggery is certainly a slang word which comes to mind. And why a tablecloth. A tablecloth is most dependably white and the beginning of a meal, before the first bite has been taken. So, what does the bug seek on the white table cloth before even a crumb has been spilled?


Jack sees Ennis as a light in the darkness.

Ennis initially states that he has not yet had the opportunity to sin, and would go to heaven. At our story’s commencement, Ennis possesses the purity of virginity.

(This is a work in progress. These are my initial thoughts and impressions.)
 
Favorite Annie Proulx Quotes

http://www.annieproulx.com/forum/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=13

In an interview in a Wyoming newspaper, Annie Proulx, who wrote the original story on which the Ang Lee film is based, corrected the common misconception about her two characters.

Annie Proulx said:
"Excuse me but it is not a story about 'two cowboys.' It is a story about two inarticulate, confused Wyoming ranch kids in 1963 who have left home and who find themselves in a personal sexual situation they did not expect, understand nor can manage.
Click to expand...


P.S. As I previewed this post, just now, before submitting, the following thought passed through my mind:

"An experience should become a part of life; not rip life apart."
 
The Inspired Title

With our every action and inaction, we risk much. The chips at stake in our gamble are always regret.

Better to die trying than try dieing.

At least our words can be immortal.

The title of the story and movie, “Brokeback Mountain” is brilliantly inspired. It is a title pregnant with possible meanings in a drama where conception is not a concern.

A story is like a ship at sea, and the title is a skilled helmsman steering it though violent storms to calm harbors.

What is this back which gets broken? Broke is past tense, pluperfect, a fête accomplish.

A camel’s back is broken by the final straw. "Broke" implies the need to fix.

"If you can't fix it, you gotta stand it."

Time is a passing succession, not of moments, but of windows of opportunity. Sometimes a window stays open for years, and a refreshing breeze of possibilities constantly troubles the curtains. But any window eventually shuts with the sinister vengeance of an atheist’s sepulcher, and no angels ever come to roll away the stone.

Is there an actual Brokeback Mountain? My research so far suggests there is not.

It is worth mentioning that there is a passing mention in the movie of the Grand Tetons, mountains named for their resemblance to enormous tits. As I continue to read the short story, I shall be on the look-out for this allusion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Teton_National_Park
 
The Jungian Shadow

Today is laundry day for me. While doing the wash, I struck up a conversation with an African American man in his 30s whom I sometimes see in the laundry room but whom I barely know. We have had one or two discussions in the past. I started the conversation by saying, simply, “I saw Brokeback Mountain yesterday". His face changed into an expression of someone who suddenly smells a bad stench. He looked at me as if I had said, “do you enjoy anal intercourse?” He said, “You watched it and you liked it? What, are you gay? You must be gay to watch a movie like that!”

Now, if I were to say that I am a fan of Hannibal Lechter, no one would suddenly become suspicious that I am perhaps a serial killer who feasts upon the human flesh of my victims".

My first response was, “Carl Jung speaks of something called the 'shadow'. When we greatly fear or hate something which is outside of us, Jung suggests that it may be simply a shadow projecting from something that is actually within us and part of us, which we fear or hate.”

A long and interesting conversation ensued. You have to bear in mind that I am White and he is Black to appreciate the argument. I suppose it also helps to picture me as elderly and him as a youth. I said, “Imagine that you know a man who is a Don Juan, and has seduced literally thousands of women. Perhaps he is a famous sports figure. Suddenly, you learn that he had one homosexual experience in his teenage years. In your mind, now, he is gay. But, if you knew a flaming homosexual, who had affairs with literally thousands of men, but you suddenly discovered that he had experienced one heterosexual relationship in his teenage years, you would not consider him heterosexual simply because of his one time with a woman. Now, let’s consider the following. If it is discovered that I, a Caucasian, have one Black ancestor, however distant, then in the eyes of many that Black ancestry makes me Black or Colored. But if you, a Negro, have one distant White ancestor, that does not make you White in the eyes of those same people.”

He protested that my two examples have nothing to do with each other; that sexual orientation is not the same as ethnicity or race. I explained, “They have everything to do with each other, because the issue is not sexuality or ethnicity, but prejudice and stereotyping.”
 
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