revisiting brokeback mountain

I remember reading the short story first before seeing Brokeback Mountain  the movie (view trailer).  A friend of mine gave me the book Close Range: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx (pronounced Pru) as a birthday present. It's probably because of my incessant gabbing about the film adaptation - which was still in production then but already receiving all the buzz and hype you can imagine - that she decided to get  a copy to ram down my throat. She Ebay-ed it since the book, I think, never saw light in the Philippines. Reading the short story, a recipient of a 1998 O Henry Short Story Award and a National Magazine Award, all the more got me keyed up on how the film will turn out.

Although the short stoty was great, and I'm sure deserving of the awards it received and the critical acclaims it merited, I remember that it somehow left me longing for more meat to chew on. But before you arch an eyebrow to what I have just said, let me explain. It is generally accepted that Miss Proulx writes densely evocative literature, holding master classes in describing landscapes and atmosphere. That her narrative has a poetic quality enhanced with just the right amount of humor sprinkled here and there (check out the names, of her characters, if they're not curious, they're strange). All these elements and much more are in glorious display in the short story. But that's exactly where my insignificant disappointment comes in. You see, good things are hard to come by and so when they do, you want to experience them for a longer period of time. And in this case, 500 pages more would have made this writer smugly satisfied and move on with her life but which, in retrospect, turned out to be a good thing for the movie as it (the short story) served as the cherry to a cake of a movie. So everybody who craved for the whole serving flocked to the theaters when the movie finally opened. I did. With my generous friend of course.

All throughout the movie, you can hear lonely strings and slide guitar in the background. All throughout the movie, you will be confronted with the quietly majestic Wyoming panorama. All throughout the movie, you will witness the coming to life of every wound-inflicting lines and poignant moments described or implied by Proulx in her story. But all these, as in the short story, are not overwhelmingly staged. Director Ang Lee shied away from infusing high-voltage drama possibly because he realized that the appeal and weight of the original narrative was its muted grace. And possibly too, he recognized that his actors were such forces of nature that to choreohraph their every move will result to daytime soap. Which brings me to the late Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. Though their physical attributes differ slightly from how Proulx profiled Enis del Mar and Jack Twist, they consummately breathed life to the characters. They walked, talked and moved exactly like how one would imagine their counterparts in the short story did. And of course, they added more. By virtue of their talent, things which written words could only limitedly express. they magically made you feel and see. Things like Jack's nuanced glances toward Enis even before "it" happened, or the strange, telling flicker in his eyes. Or the subtle changes in Ennis' body language when Jack is around, or the pain he must be feeling when he could not look him straight in the eye. All these added an extra special dimension to the story making it more vivid and almost tangible. To my mind, it is one thing when a film adaptation like this expounds on an original material and its another when artistic license is taken too seriously, specially for commercial purposes.

In retrospect, now I believe Miss Proulx could not have written Brokeback Mountain any differently. That any surrender (if there was any) to an impulse to "prolong" the bittersweet tale of Enis and Jack could have blunted its intensity. And if intense, deep-seated ache lasting 20 or so minutes (or 60+ pages) is not enough

for you as with this writer, there is the movie for the kill.

Amazon:
Brokeback Mountain (DVD)   Brokeback Mountain (CD)   Close Range : Wyoming Stories
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