G and I watched "Brokeback Mountain" again last night. We both had pretty much the same reaction to it as we have had in the past. After, we talked a while about it, then I dug up a copy of the original story by Annie Proulx. I had read it before, G hadn't. We had pretty much the same reaction to that as well, though mine was different than it had been years ago when I'd first read it.
The film is well made, very touching, beautiful to look at. Some of the acting - especially that of Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams - is great, finely calibrated. And the first half of the movie - the story of the two main characters and Ennis' wife - is nearly perfect. It's true. But it falls apart in the second half, when it tries to fill things out, adding characters and scenes that aren't in the original. It's understandable that the filmmakers would do this. I'm sure they thought the story was too short, really, and also that the characterizations might be enriched by adding more people for the two men to interact with. Not only did that not add anything that wasn't already there, but they cast three noticeably inappropriate actresses to play major roles. Michelle Williams looks and acts exactly right for her role, but Anne Hathaway, Anna Farris, and Linda Cardellini - as Jack's wife, Ennis' daughter and his invented girlfriend, respectively - never look like anything but what they are: Hollywood actresses with perfect teeth, straining to seem "country". That, combined with a strangely incompetent "aging" makeup for Heath Ledger, take us out of the truth that had been so well constructed, and undercuts the whole of the film.
(Interestingly, comparing the story with the film, we found that the screenplay uses nearly all the original dialogue, unaltered. One of its strong points.)
The original story is well constructed; the shape of it is nearly perfect. The characterizations are well done. On re-reading it, though, I was rather shocked at the inconsistency of the language. Maybe living with a writer has made me overly sensitive to every little word. (Though how can that be a bad thing...?) But it seems to me that language - the choice of each word - needs to be consistent, and congruent to the whole. Proulx is writing a scraped-knuckle sort of love story. Her characters speak in don't-nevers and you-goin-a-dos. How can she narrate using language like: suffused; inured to the stoic life; massed in slabs of somber malachite; the mountain boiled with demonic energy; a bestial drone; tumescent? The choices she makes are often so jarring. And in the end they just seem sloppy. Very disappointing, and a real disservice to a beautifully built story.
*
12 years ago
