The Structure of the Movie and Film Editing

[Luke_in_SG]

Oh.  :-[

[CANSTANDIT]

Oh.  :-[

ah, don't be  :-[ Everytime I see SS, I think 'nazis'.

[CANSTANDIT]

I'd like to talk more about mirror images, the idea of Ennis not knowing which way he was facing. Being split in two, like the mountain...The times when we see mirriors, we do not see Jack-Jack does not reflect back for Ennis. Is there any closure to this in the film? Do you see any change signified by a mirror? Here are the instances:

Jack spies Ennis while shaving, in the mirror; Jack is not in there with him.
In the bar, they spy each other, in the mirror over the bar;
In the truck at their parting, Jack spies Ennis-again, he is not in the picture himself.
At home, during the Reunion, we see Ennis's face in the mirror as he pulls the vaseline, or whatever, from the cabinet;
And in the Thanksgiving scene, Alma is reflected in the window pane in the kitchen;
Ennis's eyes follow Junior around the truck in the mirror, then he looks at her through the closed, rain-splatted window as runs to the front door.
Is this all about shattering illusions?? glass and reflections? I wonder if its about what we tell ourselves, that it is distorted often-just as looking in  mirror gives you the opposing reflection. You have to look in a mirror within a mirror to see yourself head-on the way another would, right?

and that't the end of the mirror imagery.

Is it just a device used to spy on each other? or is there meaning?? It was handy to have a mirror to see the frowing guilt mixed with the excitement on Ennis's face in the medicine cabinet. I feel at crucial moments, something is being seen that may not be accurate....the 'mirrored' view.

thoughts?

[Ministering angel]

Don't forget Ennis's reflection as he sits by the window, waiting for Jack at the reunion.

The bathroom cabinet shot, as pointed out over on Bettermost, is almost the dead centre of the film, and is the moment when Ennis decides to go with Jack and to begin that period of their lives. At that moment he's chosen Jack over Alma, not in the heat of passion but in the cold light of dawn.

Given that much of the film involves the two of them not looking each other in the eye, the mirror images strengthen the idea of not coming face to face with reality but instead looking at it on an angle or looking at it without being seen.

[Rosewood]

Don't forget Ennis's reflection as he sits by the window, waiting for Jack at the reunion.

The bathroom cabinet shot, as pointed out over on Bettermost, is almost the dead centre of the film, and is the moment when Ennis decides to go with Jack and to begin that period of their lives. At that moment he's chosen Jack over Alma, not in the heat of passion but in the cold light of dawn.

Given that much of the film involves the two of them not looking each other in the eye, the mirror images strengthen the idea of not coming face to face with reality but instead looking at it on an angle or looking at it without being seen.

Here's a funny thing about mirrors.
You can hold up something to a mirror and the reflection will point out an imbalance or flaw.
For instance, when I do a drawing that seems somehow 'off' I hold it up to a mirror
and can rapidly spot the mistake that needs adjusting. Comes in very handy.

Sometimes the 'thing' that's wrong is hard to spot in the 'real' world vs. the mirror world.
Do you suppose there ARE two different worlds? One that exists in reflection and one
that exists where we ACTUALLY are?

Hard to figure.

I wonder if Ennis saw what was wrong in his 'real' life when he looked in the mirror and so
went with it. Certainly he made no attempt to 'fix' it. Or did he?
I wonder if Ennis would say that what existed in the mirror was his reality.

I wonder if Jack, watching Ennis grow smaller and smaller in his truck mirror would have thought
that Ennis had simply disappeared into another reality.

Probably not.
But Ang Lee might have thought so.

[CANSTANDIT]

Mirrors are fundamentally disturbing-they are the only way to 'see' ourselves, literally, other than reflective serfaces-but we always see the opposite, unless we are looking in a mirror within a mirror....So is Ennis being fooled by himself? I like Mini's idea, also, of Jack looking at the truth-and not being seen.
Ennis says to him, 'sure seem in one piece to me', when we know his body has been broken and battered with bull-riding; Ennis has been in close physical contact with him, and he doesn't notice it....his far-sighted emotionality won't let him see Jack's damage.....

Later, he can't see the black baldies close enough at the Parent's house, to tell their condition. Like with Jack, Ennis is too far away=and he does not come closer yet.

Here is another thought, an a-ha I had: When he looks at the nested shirts, in the closet, he is seeing them for the first time-and  they are right-side out. He could not see Jack and him in the actual embrace-he is seeing the image of it, but not as you would in a mirror. He is seeing it as an objective viewer would. And he is face to face with the image, and he embraces the shirts-accepts the real truth.

When he held Jack on BBM-there was no mirror. Nothing reflected anything back on the mountain....Ennis was in denial.

And the whole idea of looking him in the eyes-the love being reflected back, as before the punch, would be to much-that is the reality, that he sees, as Des pointed out a few times-he is looking back at a reflection of what he feels. And he can't handle it.

Yes, it is fascinating how that mirrored moment happens at the exact middle of the movie-There are two Ennises relfected, and he goes forward as both. The double-life begins.

I know this is somewhat S&I......

[Ministering angel]

The halfway shot of the mirrored and the real Ennis also fits nicely with the story's retelling of the mountain weeks and the sixteen years (in the sense that what happens on the mountain is repeated in the 16 years). The two sections of Ennis's life balance each side of the reunion.

[CANSTANDIT]

It does fit well.....

That reminds me too, of how its been said that every scene in the film uses something from the story..

did it occur  to anyone how the train cars up front, sliding past Ennis, one by one,  in the very beginning, recall the prologue, with the panels of the dream sliding forward, ie, he is remembering? And he is leaning up against the trailer, waiting, for Jack, though he does not know it-something that has always reminded me of his place in life in the prologue.
The difference being his awareness between the two scenes.

thoughts? I think that first part, to a degree is a bit of the prologue:
The truck driver drops him off in a new town, like the rancher handing him the keys-it could be bad on the highway; or not.
He is waiting, for something-Jack, although he does not know it, against the trailer-and he remembers Jack in the prologue, as he sits in his trailer, waking up.

Ennis wakes at 5-before dawn; to the sound of the wind-Jack.

I just see some similiarities that have kind of brushed at the back of my mind for awhile now...

[Ministering angel]

Yes, before dawn, the sound of the wind, the panels of the dream  - I really like that. And how about the idea that Ennis is first seen getting out of a truck, one of those metal enclosures which fill the story, and he is at that moment open to what is about to hit him. How much further into the Prologue can we go? The wind hits Aguirre's trailer. Jack stands behind Ennis, like the shirts as they are in the story. Is there a sink? 

[CANSTANDIT]

Yes, before dawn, the sound of the wind, the panels of the dream  - I really like that. And how about the idea that Ennis is first seen getting out of a truck, one of those metal enclosures which fill the story, and he is at that moment open to what is about to hit him. How much further into the Prologue can we go? The wind hits Aguirre's trailer. Jack stands behind Ennis, like the shirts as they are in the story. Is there a sink? 

hmmm.....a sink.....well, there is the 'dirty water' as they head up the mountain.....

[Rosewood]

It does fit well.....

That reminds me too, of how its been said that every scene in the film uses something from the story..

did it occur  to anyone how the train cars up front, sliding past Ennis, one by one,  in the very beginning, recall the prologue, with the panels of the dream sliding forward, ie, he is remembering? And he is leaning up against the trailer, waiting, for Jack, though he does not know it-something that has always reminded me of his place in life in the prologue.
The difference being his awareness between the two scenes.

thoughts? I think that first part, to a degree is a bit of the prologue:
The truck driver drops him off in a new town, like the rancher handing him the keys-it could be bad on the highway; or not.
He is waiting, for something-Jack, although he does not know it, against the trailer-and he remembers Jack in the prologue, as he sits in his trailer, waking up.

Ennis wakes at 5-before dawn; to the sound of the wind-Jack.

I just see some similiarities that have kind of brushed at the back of my mind for awhile now...

Oh Ennis is definitely waiting for something, there's no doubt in my mind.
The truck drops him off at a cross roads of his life. No question.
In the film Ennis even looks back at us, after looking up at the driver.
He is casing the moment.
Whether he actually KNOWS that he's waiting, that's debatable.

That train passing by, panels of motion, is called, I believe a zoetrope effect which,
for some reason, my dictionary does not have listed. So this is probably a movie-story-telling-specific
word that has just come into being in the past few years. Read it recently in a book and thought,
well, yeah that's what's happening in the very beginning of BBM.

And yes, I think it does harken back to the short story use of 'panels' of a dream.
Though the meaning in the film is, perhaps, different.

Zoetrope is also the name of Francis Ford Coppolla's production company, so I know it is
a film related word.

(edited for spelling.)

[Ministering angel]

Zoetrope is the word.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoetrope

I wish there WAS a crossroad where Ennis gets out but I think it's just a T-intersection. The backward look mirrors the backward look in the scene at the Twists. The two scenes are, to a great extent, mirror images of each other.

[en e me]

Yes, before dawn, the sound of the wind, the panels of the dream  - I really like that. And how about the idea that Ennis is first seen getting out of a truck, one of those metal enclosures which fill the story, and he is at that moment open to what is about to hit him. How much further into the Prologue can we go? The wind hits Aguirre's trailer. Jack stands behind Ennis, like the shirts as they are in the story. Is there a sink? 

Jack is looking in the mirror shaving as if he was doing it at a sink? But there was also a sink inside Aguirre's trailer.
Aguirre could be the real estate shark tossing things at Ennis. He controls the access to the Forrest Service campsites on the allotments.
Yes the prologue analogy is plausible.

[CANSTANDIT]

How much further can we go:

The wind booms down the length of the trailer;
Jack's truck comes backfiring into the parking lot.

[Rosewood]

I think, in a way, it is much easier to find Jack in the short story prologue than it is
in the trailer scene at the end of the film. There, Jack exists only in Ennis's grief.
And MAYBE in the view out the window.

Sort of a rant:

You know, somebody over in one of the other threads mentioned an article in The Advocate
in which Heath Ledger is quoted as having said on some talk show or other, that sometimes
he and Jake had trouble not laughing during love scenes.
(I can only assume this was meant as reassuring to the audience that, indeed, he and Jake
found no iota of enjoyment in these scenes. I mean, God forbid.) The writer made note that no
one ever talks about laughing during heterosexual love scenes. This, by the way, is not
true, I've seen and read interviews in which heterosexual discomfort and nervousness
IS addressed by actors. Very few actors, in fact, speak of love scenes with any real affection
since a lot of it is mechanical with an inner eye kept firmly on their modesty AND the camera
and movements rehearsed which must look un-rehearsed and uppermost in the mind is
the trust or lack thereof each actor feels for a director who can, if he or she wants,
make a mockery of the scene for his or her own agenda. Film, as we all know, is very
much a director's medium.

Anyway:
I though I'd address this here, if you guys don't mind since it does, in a peripheral way,
have something to do with structure and film editing - especially if laughs and/or
nervousness were edited out, as they would, necessarily, have been. And also,
keeping in mind that the film was NOT shot in sequence. Few films are.
So that relates to structure as well.

I mean, these actors wouldn't be human if they didn't need to reduce tension in some way,
especially during scenes in which their careers could very well be on the line.
(And Ang Lee knew enough to clear the set during the FNIT and SNIT, if I understand it.
So he KNEW to try and keep the tension from overwhelming the actors. Good for him.
And, of course, he would not be averse to USING that very tension to add to the scene's
dynamics as well and who could blame him?)

Of course HL and JG would have felt this tension. They're actors, but they're also
human beings. This was a very intense experience for all involved,
but especially for JG and HL who had to bare their artistic souls to a world
which they KNEW would not, altogether, be understanding or accepting
of what they were seeing. One can only imagine their trepidation.
And yet, look what we got: a masterpiece.

BBM is a story that, in many ways, had never been told before.
These actors were pioneers and knew it.
Of course they would have done whatever they could to break
the tension - don't you think?

All the interviews I saw of Heath Ledger and/or Jake Gyllenhaal impressed me with their
devotion to the work and how both actors went out of their way to mitigate the
'strangeness' that others, interviewers included, tried to impose on them.
"How did it feel to kiss another man?" being the sort of thing I'm talking about.
I mean, after awhile, it must have gotten really, really boring, not to mention,
annoying. I mean, 'how does it feel to kiss another woman not your wife' amounts
to almost the same thing. How do you answer this sort of thing?
Especially after the umpteenth time?

In the film, the love scenes are of such soul-searing intensity that I find it hard to
imagine Jake and Heath having a good laugh before or after. But maybe that's just me.
And even IF it did happen as the writer in the Advocate says - so what?
The results are what matter.
I would hardly hold nervous laughter against the guys.

Oh, I'm not saying that it couldn't happen, I mean, who knows what actors need to do
to break the tension? All I'm saying is that WHATEVER they had to do to make it work,
they did. All ANYONE has to do is watch the love scenes on film and you see two actors
dedicated to bringing the TRUTH of AP's story to the screen. That is ALL that matters.
All that SHOULD matter.

What HL and JG said or didn't say on some stupid talk show should hardly matter
in comparison to the work. The work speaks for itself.

Watch the reunion.
If this isn't one of the greatest love scenes ever recorded on film, I don't know
what is.

How it got there is extraneous.