Film vs. Book -- Which was better?

[ingmarnicebbmt]

You're absolutely right.

[patroclus]

You know what I really want? A voice-over in a few key places. I imagine the dozy embrace on film, for example, with Robert Redford's read of Proulx's text. In the film as is, you get the sense it's important to Jack, for sure, with the flash back etc. But the real power of the scene is in what Jack is thinking, masterfully, brilliantly sketched by Proulx.

Oops, sorry - can't agree with this at all. One of the worst aspects of The Great Gatsby, with Robert Redford, was the intoning of huge chunks of prose straight from the novel over scenes in the film. The prose is great to read but just dies and feels overly literary in a film. Besides it implies we can't follow or understand what the visual language of the movie is communicating, surely? No, the dozy embrace communicates Jack's experience potently as a visual image just fine. And remember how much more you get from the wordless acting in the scene at Jack's parent's house. Much more than in the story. Swings and roundabouts. Voice over? let be, let be...!

One film where a voice over works brilliantly, though, is Sissy Spacek in Badlands. Really adds a weird, charming, incongruous edge to everything on screen. But that's because it's her character talking, not some omniscient narrator.

[Jeff2]

You know what I really want? A voice-over in a few key places. I imagine the dozy embrace on film, for example, with Robert Redford's read of Proulx's text. In the film as is, you get the sense it's important to Jack, for sure, with the flash back etc. But the real power of the scene is in what Jack is thinking, masterfully, brilliantly sketched by Proulx.

Oops, sorry - can't agree with this at all. One of the worst aspects of The Great Gatsby, with Robert Redford, was the intoning of huge chunks of prose straight from the novel over scenes in the film. ...

One film where a voice over works brilliantly, though, is Sissy Spacek in Badlands. Really adds a weird, charming, incongruous edge to everything on screen. But that's because it's her character talking, not some omniscient narrator.

Well now, patroclus, which is it -- that it'd wreck it or work brilliantly?  I'm not imagining huge chunks of the text being used. The occasional line or small paragraph. I certainly would not add a word to the final scene. Perfect as is. The dozy embrace? Half of the power of the scene for me comes from remembering P's text. It's not on the screen.

[patroclus]

You know what I really want? A voice-over in a few key places. I imagine the dozy embrace on film, for example, with Robert Redford's read of Proulx's text. In the film as is, you get the sense it's important to Jack, for sure, with the flash back etc. But the real power of the scene is in what Jack is thinking, masterfully, brilliantly sketched by Proulx.

Oops, sorry - can't agree with this at all. One of the worst aspects of The Great Gatsby, with Robert Redford, was the intoning of huge chunks of prose straight from the novel over scenes in the film. ...

One film where a voice over works brilliantly, though, is Sissy Spacek in Badlands. Really adds a weird, charming, incongruous edge to everything on screen. But that's because it's her character talking, not some omniscient narrator.

Well now, patroclus, which is it -- that it'd wreck it or work brilliantly?  I'm not imagining huge chunks of the text being used. The occasional line or small paragraph. I certainly would not add a word to the final scene. Perfect as is. The dozy embrace? Half of the power of the scene for me comes from remembering P's text. It's not on the screen.

Wreck it. The dialogue in the film is very spare. I think they deliberately chose to use only the minimum dialogue - leaving out a lot of what is in the story - and to tell the story through behaviour and performance and composition. I hadn't read the story when I saw the film and I grasped what Jack was experiencing in the dozy embrace immediately. When I read the story I recognised it immediately.

[richardL]

I'm not supposed to write in anymore ..   :-[
However, I read the story last night.
The book is SO not Hollywood and it exposes the film to BE Hollywood.
Jack and Ennis are far too beautiful in the film.
I suppose this is inevitable, I now sort of wish I had not read the book or not seen the film.
The book seemed to me like a wound up clock-work mechanism, so taught it could explode
and send it's pain into every corner of the heart.
I don't think the book and the film sit side-by-side very well.
I wept out loud at  " ....and easily as the right key turns the lock tumblers, their mouths ... "
That sentence says to me " it can be as right as the pure force of nature to love another man" .
I was glad to read about him discover his shirt under Jack's  -many tears- .. I have only seen the film once and
that escaped me till afterwards.
I can't think about anything else now 
Rich

[richardL]

OH God I've just re-read what I've .. written .. hell .. I still love the film beyond words, I sound as if I've dished it .. not so at all !
Rich

[alma]

OH God I've just re-read what I've .. written .. hell .. I still love the film beyond words, I sound as if I've dished it .. not so at all !
Rich

You've identified the exact difference between reading and viewing. The language in the book is so powerful - it leaps off the page and haunts you. We get to hear words and thoughts we miss in the movie. Wwe feel the roughness of these two cowboys and the peculiarly small world and big love they must squeeze inside it.

The torment is palpable through words, images, metaphors... and it does feel ready to spring, explode - taut.

The movie, though, gives me the kind of experience only visuals can. The small nuances of facial expression do in the movie what words do in the story. There are volumes of emotions, thoughts, habits, hints, hopes, heatbreaks in each of the principles in how they glance, open their mouths, hold their jaws, shrug their shoulders. It's like the language of the movie is all contained in bodies and what those bodies do.

I would not get that in the story. But likewise, I don't get the texture of the lagunage in the movie.

It is why for me, I rated them as equal because I can't stop thinking about either one and keep repeat listening/viewing, each for different reasons. Yet how incredible that both stand alone and together so well.

[Jeff2]

OH God I've just re-read what I've .. written .. hell .. I still love the film beyond words, I sound as if I've dished it .. not so at all !
Rich

You've identified the exact difference between reading and viewing. The language in the book is so powerful - it leaps off the page and haunts you. We get to hear words and thoughts we miss in the movie. Wwe feel the roughness of these two cowboys and the peculiarly small world and big love they must squeeze inside it.

The torment is palpable through words, images, metaphors... and it does feel ready to spring, explode - taut.

The movie, though, gives me the kind of experience only visuals can. The small nuances of facial expression do in the movie what words do in the story. There are volumes of emotions, thoughts, habits, hints, hopes, heatbreaks in each of the principles in how they glance, open their mouths, hold their jaws, shrug their shoulders. It's like the language of the movie is all contained in bodies and what those bodies do.

I would not get that in the story. But likewise, I don't get the texture of the lagunage in the movie.

It is why for me, I rated them as equal because I can't stop thinking about either one and keep repeat listening/viewing, each for different reasons. Yet how incredible that both stand alone and together so well.

Alma -- my thoughts exactly. And better said!

[richardL]

" The small nuances of facial expression do in the movie what words do in the story. There are volumes of emotions, thoughts, habits, hints, hopes, heatbreaks in each of the principles in how they glance, open their mouths, hold their jaws, shrug their shoulders. It's like the language of the movie is all contained in bodies and what those bodies do "

Hi Alma ... you do put it sooo well.
I so want to believe this quote above .. but .. can it be their acting and the direction was so very good ... and that the nuance and minutiae
is not in our mind's (heart's) eye ? I think, yes it is so good .. but I'm afraid of my own desire for this to be something more than special.
And the way it consumes my life, I guess it is. 
 
 

[andy]

I regard it as impossible to put one above the other. My first viewing of the movie left me with too many frustrations that reading the book just put right. Like the proverbial chicken and egg I don't think we can separate the two. Had the movie never been made the book would have and indeed will stand the test of time as a classic 'short'. Now we have the movie and the brilliant portrayals of all concerned, they can both stand together as two parts of the one magnificent and profound entity. I would hate to be without either.

[JHL11]

"I liked the story; but the film had an element of sensuality that it lacked. And IMO the ending had more depth."

Wow. I see it the opposite way. I think the film lacked the sensuality of the story. Don't get me wrong, the love scenes in the film were beyond gorgeous. The story, however, had more depictions of their sex life. If their is one criticicism I share with others here is that I believe the film suffers from not including at least one more scene of eroticism.

Like most others here i would have loved a scene in the film as in the book where, years into their relationship they are discussing their respective children and Ennis is "undoing buttons" and Jack slides his hand between Ennis legs.

Agree with you on the ending.

 
 

[andy]

In total agreement with you there, JHL. For a grandma, Proulx has captured their sexual relationship so well with just the right amount of reminders that right up untill the last, there was the ''brilliant charge of their infrequent couplings....'' something the movie is indeed sadly lacking in.

[JHL11]

Hi Andy.

Here's where the film and the story are a draw and which is, to me, remarkable because Proulx and Ang Lee don't see the scene the same way but actually differ on its depiction:

Proulx writes when describing the scene where Jack is peeling potatos and Ennis is undressed and washing himself "...(no drawers,no socks, Jack noticed...".  What a ton of erotic power in those mere six words!

Otoh, Lee directs Jake Gyllenhaal to NOT look at Ennis whom we see in blurred focus naked, nevertheless the erotic power is equal to that in the story. What an amazing scene and what superb acting by Gyllenhaal.

[andy]

Would it be sacrilegious of me to suggest that not all Lee's directions best served the movie but as a whole, he does the most stupendous job?

[JHL11]

Andy- You and I will be sacrilegious buddies together because I totally agree with you.

Stupendous is the word to describe how Lee totally captures Proulx's descriptions of Brokeback Mountain. No other director could have done it better.

Just wondering. When you write "not all Lee's directions best served the movie" can you be more specific?