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29 Dec 05 - 01:50 PM (#1636769) Subject: Contemporary Film as Ballad Updated From: Charlie Baum "Brokeback Mountain" is one of the best films I've seen in a long time. It's based on a prize-winning short story by Annie Proulx (which you can read in its fairly brief entirety by clicking here). In very economical writing, the story says as much by what it doesn't say as by what it does; it is a tale of love repressed, and the writing gains strength through appropriately similar repressions, as does Heath Ledger's remarkable performance in the film version. As I watched the movie and read the story, I kept thinking of it as a ballad brought down to date. The story and film explore the complexity of forbidden relationships. In an earlier time, ballads were written exploring similar themes--ballads like "Mill o' Tifty's Annie" or "Annachie Gordon." Those old Scottish ballads dealt with love thwarted because of social class or economically required marriages. In today's society, such reasons for prohibiting relationship are quaintly outdated, and even prohibitions of marriage due to ethnic or racial differences seem passe. The issue of sexual orientation is the frontier of relationship prohibition that resonates in today's society, so that's the place where this modern tragic ballad is set. Just as Mill o' Tifty's Annie's brother breaks her back for "liking" Andrew Lammie, so the couple in Brokeback Mountain needs to worry constantly about the possibility of being gay-bashed to death. As the character Ennis DelMar observes: "You and me can't hardly be decent together if what happened back there . . . grabs on us like that. We do that in the wrong place we'll be dead. " In fact, one year after Annie Proulx's story was published in The New Yorker, University of Wyoming college student Matthew Shephard was beaten to death for being gay and left crucified on a ranch fence about 30 miles from Ms. Proulx's home. She was part of the jury pool called for his murder (although she did not actually serve). There are stylistic resonances with ballads, too. Much of the story is told through compression into episodes, including dialogue from characters who do not understand the wholeness of the situation. The dialect is Wyoming Ranch-hand rather than Broad Scots--"There's no reins on this one. It scares the piss out a me." Ms. Proulx is careful to have her characters speak in realistic terms, given who they are, and the screenplay by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana carefully preserves much of the language of the original short story. The "gay cowboy" moniker used to describe the movie probably derives from the South Park line a couple of years ago where Cartman, one of the South Park kids, asks if independent films are all about "gay cowboys eating pudding." The main protagonists in "Brokeback Mountain" are actually sheepherders, not cowboys, and we can have a nuanced discussion about whether they truly qualify as "gay" once you've seen the movie or read the story. BTW, there's no pudding in "Brokeback Mountain" either. Heath Ledger's performance is the best acting I've seen, perhaps, since Meryl Streep in "Sophie's Choice." He manages to convey the full complexity of a very repressed character with understatements and silences. A must-see film, unless you're too homophobic to deal with the subject matter. --Charlie Baum I've copied this posting (and further edited it) from its original location in another Mudcat BS thread which degenerated into homophobic sniping and arguments over the behaviors of certain rude regular posters. I hope that this thread can generate serious discussion; frivolous remarks belong in the other thread. |
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29 Dec 05 - 02:58 PM (#1636825) Subject: RE: Contemporary Film as Ballad Updated From: Q (Frank Staplin) "Brokeback Mountain," originally published in 'The New Yorker,' is one of eleven fine stories by Annie Proulx in "Close Range, Wyoming Stories," 1999, Scribners, with watercolor illustrations by William Matthews. A beautiful book by the author who won the Pulitzer Prize for "The Shipping News." Several of the stories would make fine films. "Heart Songs and Other Stories" is another book by her with stories about country life. |
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29 Dec 05 - 03:05 PM (#1636829) Subject: RE: Contemporary Film as Ballad Updated From: katlaughing Thank you, Charlie. A fine analysis and I hope the discussion in this thread will continue in the same vein. |
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29 Dec 05 - 03:19 PM (#1636838) Subject: RE: Contemporary Film as Ballad Updated From: Emma B My thanks too Charlie - I have yet to see this widely acclaimed film but if it anything half as beautifully observed and written as 'The Shipping News' it will be worth the wait. |
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29 Dec 05 - 03:25 PM (#1636845) Subject: RE: Contemporary Film as Ballad Updated From: Q (Frank Staplin) The watercolors by western artist William Matthews, sadly, are only in the first edition of "Close Range." |
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29 Dec 05 - 03:45 PM (#1636852) Subject: RE: Contemporary Film as Ballad Updated From: katlaughing Having just read the story, all I can say is I hope the movie is better. Maybe it's just me, but I don't care for her rushed and jumbled style, plus I think there are better uses of the language to convey speech patterns of Wyoming cowboys. Her dialogue is just a little off from what my ear heard all those years of growing up there and my adult years spent there. From what I've heard of the movie, it conveys much more than her story. kat |
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29 Dec 05 - 04:17 PM (#1636868) Subject: RE: Contemporary Film as Ballad Updated From: Q (Frank Staplin) Annie Proulx has written a second set of Wyoming stories, "Bad Dirt." Her current project concerns the unfenced 6000 sq. mile Red Desert region of Wyoming. Her biography, and comments about "Brokeback Mountain" and the film are here: www.annieproulx.com: Annie Proulx |
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29 Dec 05 - 05:49 PM (#1636928) Subject: RE: Contemporary Film as Ballad Updated From: katlaughing Wyoming, the least populated state, does not have the infrastructure to support a film crew with its many needs that range between contemporary technologies and good housing and transportation. It is impossible to tell the film was not made in Wyoming. That seems a bit off in that "Starship Troopers" was filmed there and there is a Wyoming Film Office. I suppose mostly it was the fact she says it was cheaper to be made in Canada. As to whether one can tell if it was shot in WY or not remains to be seen. I am very familiar with Riverton and the other places she writes about. Contrary to what she says about some Wyomingites not liking her "realistic" characters, the only complaint I have about them, in the story, is, as I said before, her use of rhetoric which doesn't ring quite true to the native ear. I agree with whomever it was she said told her she should write novels and not try to cram so much into a short story! I AM looking forward to the movie. kat |
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29 Dec 05 - 08:31 PM (#1637002) Subject: RE: Contemporary Film as Ballad Updated From: Q (Frank Staplin) You are entitled to your opinion of the language of the characters in the story, but, having been raised in the Rocky Mountain area, I find it 'realistic'. The short story "Brokenback Mountain" is a prize winning classic, partly because of its taut, realistic dialog. Beau L'Amour (son of Louis) calls it "great, multi-layered art," that extends the genre, which he considers mostly not relevant to modern life. Many reviewers consider it her 'masterpiece,' and I agree. Along with McMurtry ("Lonesome Dove"), Proulx currently is the best writer on the west. Charlie Baum's idea of a "ballad brought down to date" is not far off the mark. |
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29 Dec 05 - 10:14 PM (#1637096) Subject: RE: Contemporary Film as Ballad Updated From: katlaughing I didn't say I don't find the story realistic. I object to her lack of "ear" for the genuine Wyoming vernaculars. As you know, the Rocky Mountain West is pretty vast; there are many regional differences in spoken language and ways of going about things. I will give her story another try, but so far I find it much less than a "masterpiece." Art Thieme went through Cheyenne in the early sixties where he picked up the Cowboy's Barbry Allen, from an old cowboy named Del Bray. He has a great ear for regional voices and, imo, could do a much better job at dialogue than Proulx. I loved the movie Shipping News. I think she should stick to writing about what she knows best, New England. But, then, I couldn't stand "Lonesome Dove," either.:-) |
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30 Dec 05 - 03:34 PM (#1637573) Subject: RE: Contemporary Film as Ballad Updated From: Dave Sutherland I have been ploughing through her book "Accordion Crimes" since the Autumn (more to do with me not having much time to read as opposed to her style)and I find her stories facinating as well as most harrowing. She must have put in a lot of study regarding various nationalities traditional and ethnic music to complete such a venture. |
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30 Dec 05 - 10:44 PM (#1637895) Subject: RE: Contemporary Film as Ballad Updated From: katlaughing In an article in WY's only state-wide paper, the Casper Star Tribune, I find it interesting that one AP writer, David Germain, characterised each main actor in the movie as "a family man in a homosexual affair with an old ranch buddy in 'Brokeback Mountain'." I'll have another go at the story this weekend. Will also get input from Rog and our daughter. |
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31 Dec 05 - 12:29 AM (#1637988) Subject: RE: Contemporary Film as Ballad Updated From: Q (Frank Staplin) Get the book "Close Range, Wyoming Stories," which has ten more stories in addition to "Brokeback Mountain," before you judge her abilities. It has come out in paperback, minus William Matthews' fine watercolors, however. She is a master of the short story. |