Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx, author of The Shipping News https://realini.blogspot.com/2017/05/note-on-shipping-news-based-on-novel-by.html - 9 out of 10

 

Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx, author of The Shipping News https://realini.blogspot.com/2017/05/note-on-shipping-news-based-on-novel-by.html

9 out of 10

 

 

This reader is familiar with the work of Annie Proulx – well, maybe familiar is not the word, unless it was meant as a hyperbole – because he has read The Pulitzer Prize for Literature Winner published in 1993 The Shipping News, which was adapted (just like Brokeback Mountain) for the big screen, with the now controversial, and once winner of two Oscars, Kevin Spacey, in the leading role, and Kate Winslet, Dame Judi Dench in other roles

 

Ennis Del Mar, portrayed by the late, regretted Heath Ledger, has the most important part in the narrative of the Brokeback Mountain, although we could argue that the mountain itself is paramount, hence the title, and Jack Twist aka Jake Gyllenhaal takes the ‘supporting position’, this is how it got nominated at the Academy Awards, where the film has won three top prizes and was nominated for many more

Both Ennis and Jack are shepherds and seek work at the office of Joe Agguire aka Randy Quaid – the latter appears to be one of the five or fewer A-list thespians in Hollywood, and conceivably around the world, that support the Orange Jesus with ardor – who has some one thousand or more sheep in his property

 

Jack would joke at some point on their number – spoiler alert, you would do well to stop reading, not so much because I will give you unwanted details, which I could, but more because this is not so much fun, and worse, not inspirational, mirthful, interesting, - when he is tired of eating only beans, he wants some mutton

Joe Agguire hires the shepherds only if they accept inhuman and illegal conditions, he wants them to spend the nights in the cold – it would snow in the middle of summer, later in the story – without a fire, because that would be evidence for the rangers, and the owner sends his animals in forbidden, reservation areas

 

The employees only have tinned food, which is basically beans in the wild, and they have to make a list, and then meet rarely with a man who brings the cans with the mules, but on the way back Ennis and the animals meet with the bear, and the horse and mules are so scared, that the man is thrown down, and then he has to run after them

Which reminds me of the Zen Master Story, told in the splendid Charlie Wilson’s War  https://realini.blogspot.com/2017/06/charlie-wilsons-war-written-by-aaron.html by the wondrous Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is a CIA expert in the film – the Master has a horse that runs away and the villagers come to express their sympathy…

 

‘We shall see’ is the reply of the Zen Master, and when the horse returns with other, wild horses, the community is joyful, he says the same thing ‘we shall see’, which is answer to the regret expressed when his son breaks a leg, while trying to tame a wild animal, which in turn makes him escape conscription, when army representatives come to town, the conclusion being that we need to remember…Kipling

‘ If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you…’ these are the first lines of If https://realini.blogspot.com/2022/06/if-by-rudyard-kipling-one-of-most.html by Rudyard Kipling, which could be placed upside down, for buoyancy…

 

There is a comedy stand-up act somewhere – I have seen it on Comedy Central, but forgot the protagonist’s name – in which the talented actor says that if ‘all around you are losing their head, and blaming it on you’ you should have your head examined, which is pertinent advice, however much Kipling was right in suggesting that the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ is not always what is taken to be, look at the Orange Jesus aka Trump cult

Jack is helping Ennis when the latter returns with a head wound, and furthermore, when his companion is freezing outside, urges him to come into the tent, where the two have sex for the first time…in the morning nonetheless, Ennis insists that this ‘has happened only once, he is no ‘queer’, to which Jack replies that he is not ‘queer’ either

 

When there is a snow fall in summer, they are told to gather the sheep – they have had trouble when the animals had gotten mixed with another flock, and then when the predators killed some, Ennis kills a coyote, and then an elk so that they have some change in their beans based (sometimes only) diet – and they seem to get their separate ways

Ennis marries Alma aka Michelle Williams – nominated for this performance and then four other times, with such a wide range, taking Marylin Monroe, Steven Spielberg’s mother in the Fabelmans, the traumatized wife of Casey Affleck in Manchester by The Sea https://realini.blogspot.com/2023/10/manchester-by-sea-by-kenneth-lonergan.html - and they have children

 

Notwithstanding that, when Jack comes to visit, the two embrace and kiss passionately, near a staircase, where Alma sees them and is overwhelmed – she would later talk to Ennis, by this time her ex-husband, and tell him how she would place a note in the fish box which he was taking with him, when ‘fishing’ with his friend, only to see that he would not even open it, against the claims of so much trout eaten near the Brokeback Mountain

The relationship, which we may have to call love – I have had this qualm, ever since reading Thomas Mann https://realini.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-magic-mountain-is-classic-that.html who has a story explaining that we abuse words like enamored, friend, which exist only in art – has to be extant in a period when they would kill gay men, Ennis recalls how his father took him and his brother to see a corpse, a homosexual man that had been dragged, his penis pulled off and then killed and thrown into a ditch…

 

 Now for my standard closing with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world   – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

Some favorite quotes from To The Heritage and other works

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

‚parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus’

“From Monty Python - The Meaning of Life...Well, it's nothing very special...Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”