(Some minor spoilers for the movie Brokeback Mountain below.)
Rewatched Brokeback Mountain yesterday. I first watched the movie when it came out in theatres, and though I did like it the first time, I appreciate the movie even more after this rewatch. The first time around, I think I was in shock in regards to how much the movie expanded upon the short story the movie is based off of. Literally about half the movie is either entirely fabricated or extracted from tiny, tiny implications in the original text. The best example of this is Jack's wife, who can hardly be called a character in the original story. The only description of her is when Ennis narrates, "No doubt about it, she was polite but the little voice was as cold as snow." That's it. And from that alone, the script writers created a fleshed-out character with maybe fifteen minutes of screen time, a character that stayed true to the description of being "cold as snow" while giving those words a lot more depth and explanation.
Rewatching this movie also helped me better appreciate the subtleties of the script and the acting in certain scenes. One thing that I missed the first time around was a snatch of dialogue related to the implication that Jack was having an affair with the foreman (the husband of the chatty woman Jack danced with). During one conversation Jack had with Ennis, he mentioned having "something on the side with the foreman's wife." Because of course, in Ennis's mind, it's perfectly okay for Jack to be doing whatever with whomever if it's with women. But with other men? That's a big no-no and Jack knew that without it being said.
Then there are all of the implications regarding Jack's wife, Lureen. As I mentioned previously, this is a character that was barely even mentioned in the short story, but man did the movie make her into a subtle, interesting character. Her last scene over the phone with Ennis is particularly notable. When Ennis states that Brokeback Mountain, a place so important to Jack, was where him and Jack herded sheep one summer, she pauses and begins tearing up. That alone is enough for the audience to infer that, at that moment, Lureen finally realized that there was indeed another person who Jack loved more than her, and that this Ennis person was it.
A lot of people criticize the movie for being "slow," but I ate up every minute of it. The characterization is so complex and so subtle, and great characterization is the biggest deciding factor in determining whether I like a story or not. There's so much depth and so much to catch if you really pay attention; it really does feel as if the characters were living, breathing people and that's something I hardly say in regards to movie characters.
Here's one of the few remaining links that contains the Brokeback Mountain short story in its entirety, below the pictures of Jake Gyllenhaal. :P
