"There ain't never enough time, never enough..."*
In the sparest of prose, Brokeback Mountain mines a deep and passionate well of profundity. Author Annie Proulx’s choices of syntax, cadence, rhythm and individual words have each been labored over and calculated. But that seemingly-cold process yields such exquisite desire and depth — as time, circumstances, and stubbornness combine to keep two doomed lovers apart.
In this particular short story, the spareness of the tale seems to place the responsibility of depth and subtlety with the reader to supply. Its is his/her perceptions of the characters, actions, and events that give the epic breadth to the simple story on the page. The inner lives of the characters are largely left unsaid, but it is implied in what they do in their day to day lives over time. These people are products of their upbringings within a culture where men are told not to voice or show their emotions and, instead, tamp them down inside their guts.
Ennis del Mar is a man of his upbringing, one to never let on his true feelings or desires, while scrimping a living bearing watch over other men’s livestock. The man he falls for, Jack Twist, is often rash and impulsive in his actions and talk, eking out money rodeoing and summers herding cattle and sheep. These men share an idyllic summer in the early 60s on a mountain side in Wyoming — one in which, despite their better figuring, they find something like passion. This world that these two main characters reside in bears no sympathy for a love that does not exist within it’s rigorously strict standards. And it takes everything in their power and beyond to attempt to uphold the rules — both spoken and unspoken.
It’s difficult for films, with their abbreviated running times, to always capture the depth, subtlety and psychological insight of a book. The clarity with which the story of Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain was adapted to the screen reminds me somewhat of that which was accomplished with Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men by the Coen Brothers. The two stories are vastly different, but each is so spare in its prose — yet the returns are so great. For many readers, the little of what verse is on the page resonates deeply at an emotional level, and the film versions only serve to deepen those reactions. Despite little description of visuals, both adaptations seem to effortlessly capture and expand the story’s intentions and themes in masterful ways: The characters and their surroundings look, sound, and behave just as we imagine they should.
In Brokeback Mountain, the beauty and idyllic nature of that one summer is cut short, and the two lovers agree to part for good. But try as mightily as they do — each marrying themselves away to suspecting women, fathering children, continuing working, meeting only quickly and furtively through the years — Ennis and Jack cannot stamp out their yearning for each other. They continually question what life would have been like if they had been capable of staying together. And as age rapidly wears on their faces, they long for a world that would have allowed them to have really loved one another without any reservations. This aching wondering echoes long after the book covers are closed and the screen fades to black.
*dialogue from the film
