Analysis Of Broke Back Mountain

Analysis of Brokeback Mountain

Story/plot
The beginning of the story by Annie Proulx corresponds to the end of the plot. Few lines and the narration about the relationship between Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist starts, giving some information about them. Then it goes on chronologically, except for some flashbacks.
The film based on it shows the story without breaks, from the beginninguntil the end. There is just one flashback, when Ennis tells Jack an episode of his childhood and it is fundamental in the story, because it let us understand why the homosexual affair between the two boys is “undermined”.
The scene is also interrupted in many points by “silent moments”, in which we can see and really feel the nature with all its force. However, the descriptions that we find inthe book are more powerful and they better contribute to create the raw atmosphere of the setting.
The plot presents many suspense moments, but the real climax is close to the end, when Ennis know about the dead of Jack.
Some scenes are present only in the film. Just think when Jack has a discussion with his father-in-law about an order he has given to his child during Thanksgiving: it is acentral moment, because Jack comes to the limit of his “farce” as a good head of the family.
We can say that the structure of the written story is more effective than the one built for the film but, at the same time, the strict chronological order followed by the director Ang Lee is reinforced by the beauty of the meaningful images on the screen.

Character/characterisation
Ennis del Mar andJack Twist are the main characters of the story. The first one scruffy and with a body “made for the horse and for fighting”, the other with curly hair, “buckteeth” and an infatuation for the rodeo life. They were both raised in small, poor ranches and both “high school dropout country boys with no prospects, brought up to hard work and privation, both rough-mannered, rough-spoken, inured to thestoic life”. They know each other during the same sheep operation on Forest Service Land on Brokeback Mountain. That job interested them because they wanted to save same money for a small “spread”.
The film focuses on these two characters through all the story, often revolving the camera around them with close-ups, but letting them taking their time to reflect and speak. They are characterisedthrough gestures and short meaningful dialogues (silences included!). Jack seems to be more sensitive and even more romantic than Ennis, who is a man of few words (just think of what he writes on the postcards to Jack). But a closer analysis reveals his delicacy of feeling, hardened by an harsh childhood.
Nature is the third main character in this story, because its elements seem to be alive!The wind makes its presence felt right from the beginning of the text, animating objects (“The shirts hanging on a nail shudder slightly in the draft” in the first lines) and establishing a strong contact between human beings and nature. The weather is able to change things and situation.
In fact, the secret homosexual relationship between Jack and Ennis, which could be considered as an unnaturalbehaviour, springs up in a natural and “free” context.
Another important character of this story is Alma Beers, the young wife of Ennis. She seems to be shy and very frail, weak at the beginning, but going on with the narration she reveals to be perceptive and perhaps strong when she wants to divorce. She doesn’t speak much but her expressions and gestures let us clearly know what she feels,especially when she discovers the affair between his husband and the cowboy from Texas. The sex with Ennis is the reflection of the sex with Jack for him and this is evident in the film. It’s clear that the heterosexual relationship is disturbed by the homosexual one.
Joe Aguirre, “wavy hair the color of cigarette ash and parted down the middle”, is the foreman of Forest Service. Cold, always...