Author: Da Li
Yesterday, after watching the movie "Brokeback Mountain", I have been thinking about how to write this article, and at the same time I can't help but sigh in my heart, only Ang Lee can make this feeling of the movie.
Anyone who has known about the film should know that it is a gay film about the love-hate entanglement between two men, Jack and Ennis.
Director Ang Lee implemented his consistent style, that is, leaving enough space for the audience to guess. If this way is not used properly, it will definitely be scolded by the audience, but Ang Lee can give people a long feeling of evocation, and I have to say that it is kung fu home.
Because this film is about a love story between two men, many places are handled very subtly (of course, Ang Lee's filming style is originally implicit), and the audience needs to taste it carefully to find the places that echo before and after.
So, today's article is mainly aimed at some of the details in the film.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="4" >01 Jack is always active</h1>
Jack and Ennis were only nineteen when they met, and Jack was the more active party, as can be seen from the very beginning.
The two men came to the ranch at the same time to apply, ennis arrived first, and then Jack arrived in his little black wreck. One of the small details is that Jack kicked his car when he got out of the car and scolded "broken car" in his mouth. This shows that his personality is more extroverted.
Later, Jack saw Ennis standing quietly opposite, buried his head and not speaking, and then Lee gave a close-up of Jack's face, at this time Jack already had a feeling of inexplicability for Ennis, so his next action would be to use the rearview mirror to peek at Ennis and secretly shave.
This is equivalent to a woman seeing a man she likes secretly tidying up her makeup, and changing it to a man becomes a shave.
So here, Jack's little broken car and the scum on his face are the key props that drive the plot forward.
Then the two men went up the mountain and began a hard life of shepherding sheep.
Life on the mountain is harsh and the environment is harsh, but it is also a good time for two people to get along day and night to cultivate feelings.
Before going up the mountain, the two sat down for a drink, and the conversation between the two was also a foreshadowing of their feelings.
Jack is an Unpopular American Cowboy, to put it bluntly, he makes money by cowboy performances, while Ennis is a child raised by his brothers and sisters after the death of his parents.
Both of them had to come out to work, and their lives were worse than one, and their experiences were more pitiful than the other. But the two are very different, so it also creates the extroverted personality of Cowboy Jack and the taciturn personality of Ennis.
And two poor people are talking about their experiences together at this moment, and they can't help but feel sorry for each other. So although this plot is only a short two-minute episode, it gives the audience the initial reason why the two people are attracted to each other.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="4" >02 Ennis's childhood shadow ran through his life</h1>
Later, the two people spent the day and night on the mountain, and they fell in love for a long time, until the night of the dark wind in the middle of the month could not help themselves.
At this point in the story, the two are officially engaged. And that's where the twist begins.
Ennis's father was an extreme opponent of homosexuality, and once took Ennis and his brother to see the tragic death of a homosexual in the town. How miserable? There was also a close-up of that scene, and what impressed me the most was the face that was white like a vampire and the eroded lower body.
I feel pain when a woman looks at it, let alone a male? And Ennis was just a child at that time.
So, this scene left a lifelong psychological shadow on Ennis, and even after he had sex with Jack, he still refused to admit his sexuality.
One of the details goes like this.
After the first night of the two, Ennis got up in the morning and rode to the pasture as usual to herd the sheep, and then found the carcass of a sheep. According to the plot, the sheep was taken away by a nearby wolf in the dark. When Ennis came to find him in the morning, the sheep's internal organs had been hollowed out by the wolf, leaving only the skin sac.
This scene may be confused by many viewers, and when I first watched it, I also wondered, what is the significance of this scene? Later, combined with the plot before and after the film, a possibility came to mind.
The sheep appeared to echo Ennis's father's taking him to see the homosexual who had died tragically. Perhaps this scene reminded Ennis of what his father had said, that childhood shadow and fear had returned to him, so that when Ennis saw Jack again, he would tell Jack when last night had not happened, and declare that he was not "glass".
In fact, this is a kind of fear in Ennis's heart.
And Ennis's psychological shadow is also a shadow that runs through the entire film. From the time he first covered his ears and denied that he was gay, to the twenty years he avoided the relationship between the two men, it was inextricably linked to what he had seen as a child. This is also the fundamental reason why he has been on the passive side of the relationship between the two.
However, there is also a sense of irony here.
Ennis's father was an extreme peonent of homosexuality, and even risked scaring his children to take his children to see that bloody scene, just to warn the two children not to go down this road, and as a result, Ennis really became gay. This completely counterproductive, even intimidating, approach to education has undoubtedly failed utterly.
Under the influence of his father, Ennis, although he found out that he was gay, still married and had children step by step, but still couldn't help but go to Brokeback Mountain with Jack for a few days every year, but finally divorced, and the ending also implied that he would end up alone.
On closer examination, it is not difficult to find that the irony here is extremely strong. Perhaps what his father did was the root cause of Ennis's path to homosexuality, and the culprit of the tragedy between Ennis and Jack.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="4" >03 Jack and Ennis have fundamental differences in ideas</h1>
At that time, homosexuality was not yet accepted by the world, so the two people had been carefully hiding from the people around them. After they left Brokeback Mountain, they didn't see each other again after four years. At this time, the two people had already married and had children separately. Ennis married his own young plum bamboo horse, and Jack married a rich family.
And the marriage process of these two people is also very in line with the characteristics of the characters.
Ennis had mentioned that he was going to marry Alma when he returned home, and more than once. It can be seen from this that Ennis has mentioned this many times not without reason.
One is to remind himself that he is not gay, that he already has a marriage partner, and the other is not to remind Jack. From this we can also see the repression and contradiction in this person's heart.
In contrast, Jack is much simpler. The two men first took the initiative, and the first night of the two men was also his initiative, and then after four years of separation, he also took the initiative to contact Ennis and drive to meet him.
Jack knew he was gay from the beginning, so he didn't have any green horses and liked women. He and his wife met at the cattle farm, then drank in the nightclub, had a one-night stand in the car, and finally got married and had children.
During the twenty years that the two men knew each other, Jack repeatedly offered to fly with Ennis, but Wastnis refused for various reasons.
In Ennis's heart, he always believes that two people should go their own way, live their own lives, and must not let people perceive their relationship, otherwise there will never be a good ending.
That's why his ex-wife reacts so much to him when he singles out that he's gay. He had always planned to secretly interact with Jack, never thinking of being a double-dweller. This is also the most fundamental difference between him and Jack in terms of ideas.
Ennis was addicted to the trivialities of life because he could not get past the level in his heart until the news of Jack's death came.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="4" >04 Jack's true cause of death</h1>
There are many claims and speculations on the Internet about Jack's death, but I think the film has made it very clear. When Ennis learns of Jack's death from Jack's wife, the film inserts a scene in which Jack is surrounded by several people, including a close-up of a person attacking his lower body.
The clip is only a few seconds long, and it doesn't clearly show that it was Jack who was beaten, but what is the point of this clip here? In fact, it is to imply the real cause of Jack's death in the audience.
His homosexuality was finally discovered after twenty years. And he was killed in the same way that Ennis had seen with his father when he was a child.
That is to say, Ennis's nightmares as a child have finally reappeared.
This is evidenced by additional details.
For example, after Jack's death, Ennis went to Jack's house to meet his parents. Jack's parents didn't show surprise or confusion, they showed that they knew the relationship between the man sitting at their table at the moment and their son.
So Jack was gay about the fact that his parents already knew, but how did they know? The film does not confess, but this is a hint that Jack's homosexual identity has been exposed, indirectly leading to his death.
Jack's father even said directly: I know where Brokeback Mountain is. The words implied that he had learned something from Jack.
At this time, Ennis's performance also changed. No longer the kind of caution or violent reaction, but the natural admission of his relationship with Jack. If this had been put before, he would not have been so calm after others pointed it out.
And all of these changes stemmed from Jack's death. This also shows that the shadow in Ennis's heart depends on the death of his lover to get rid of, or even can not be completely shaken off. This is the tragedy.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="4" >05 The cruelty of reality</h1>
Jack's mother later allowed Ennis to go upstairs to have a look at Jack's room, and Ennis went up and found the two men hanging shirts on a hanger in Jack's closet.
The one inside was Ennis's, with the cuffs he had wiped off the nosebleed, and the one on the outside was Jack's blue denim shirt.
Jack's shirt is on the outside, Ennis's on the inside, and this detail represents that for twenty years Jack has been embracing Ennis, accommodating his escape, accommodating his fears.
Ennis took the two shirts with him, and Jack's mother did not object, but immediately took a pocket to help him put them away, and said to him: "Come back to see us when you are free."
This sentence shows that Jack's parents have accepted this fact, but are powerless to change Jack's death, so they pin their thoughts on Ennis.
At the end of the film, the detail of the shirt changes.
When Ennis's daughter came to tell him she was getting married, Ennis asked her a question: How long have you known him?
The daughter said it had been a year.
Then the daughter talked about the time and place of her marriage, but Ennis didn't really listen much, and the point was that he asked another question: Does that guy love you?
Then the daughter said with certainty, yes, he loved me.
This sentence undoubtedly reminded Ennis of Jack.
He and Jack have been in love for twenty years, and jack has always been active in expressing his love, and he has always been very passive. Moreover, the love of two people is intolerable to the world and is absolutely taboo. However, the love between the daughter and the boyfriend can be generously expressed, and two people who have known each other for a year can announce their marriage, and then be together forever and ever after.
There is no doubt that Ennis's heart is both envious and sad at the moment.
At that time, the love between a man and a man is never seen, and the slightly exposed gap comes out like a ghost that cannot see the light will eventually die in the sun.
He endured for twenty years that he could not compare with the year of others. This feeling really cannot be described in words.
This is the cruelty of reality.
After the daughter left, the coat fell on him. When he folded up his daughter's coat and put it in the cupboard, he inevitably saw the coats of the two people he had brought back from Jack's house.
At this time, the order of the coats changed, becoming Jack's coat inside and Ennis's coat on the outside. And Ennis looked at the two tightly attached coats with tears and remorse, reached out to button the one inside, and said: Jack, I swear...
As for the specific content of the oath, it is still blank.
But from this shift in detail, we can also guess what Ennis meant. He retreated for twenty years, and when Jack died, he regretted it, at this time he could not make up for the lack of the two of them in the past twenty years, and could only use the remaining half of his life to guard the love of the two alone.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="4" >06Lurin know? </h1>
There is also a point of doubt in the film is whether Jack's wife Lu lin knows that Jack is gay?
I don't think she knows.
When Ennis calls jack, Lullyn tells Ennis about Jack's death and says that Jack wants to bury his ashes in Brokeback Mountain.
At this time, Lu lin did not have a big or very hidden emotional ups and downs. Her relationship with Jack had long since vanished, so she did not show a very sad expression about Jack's death, and even had red nail polish on her hands. That's why when she told Ennis Jack about his death, her tone would be so flat.
But when Jack told her that Brokeback Mountain was where they used to herd sheep together, Lu lin's expression changed in an instant, and tears appeared in her eyes. Only then did she understand what Jack meant when he said that Brokeback Mountain was his favorite place, and that he was going to bury his ashes in Brokeback Mountain.
So I think Actually Lullyn was the last to know.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="4" >07 Ang Lee's rebellion</h1>
To be honest, after watching "Brokeback Mountain", I didn't have the feeling of being moved to tears, but I would reminisce about the clips in it, a look back of the actors, a subtle look, are the highlights of this film.
Ang Lee is really good at making this type of film, and his films will carry a sense of rebellion against the world.
For example, Jack in this film, in that era when homosexuals will not have a good end, the bravery and tenacity he showed is special, and it is his special that leads to the end of his final death. He just likes men, he just wants to be with the men he likes. He expressed this point directly from beginning to end.
Another example is the jade dragon in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", which is also a representative of rebellion. The freedom she sought was also not understood and accepted by the people of her time.
The rebellion of these characters is Ang Lee's questioning and challenge to the world, which is the most attractive part of his films.
Finally, back to Brokeback Mountain.
When true love comes, is it really so important to be a man and a man, or a man and a woman, or a woman and a woman?
Author: Da Li, the author of today's headlines signed.
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