Although Brokeback Mountain is a very well made movie in the second half Lee runs out of material and starts making things up about Ennis. He strays a little too far from what Proulx originally intended the character to be like. After Ennis and Alma’s fight at Thanksgiving in the original story it says “He didn’t try to see his girls for a long time…”. In Lee’s adaptation he keeps in contact with his daughters and sees them occasionally, whereas Proulx makes him into a father that will leave his kids and wait for them to find him. Lee changes the character a little too dramatically and makes it almost hard to believe it is the same person. Although people can change over time generally they do not change everything about themselves.
Where I start to have even more trouble with the changes and liberties that Lee has taken with the story is around the time that Ennis meets Cassie the waitress. If Proulx’s had wanted Ennis to meet a waitress, she would have had him meet a waitress. I’m sure that it wasn’t that she couldn’t think of it, she just didn’t feel it was a necessary thing to happen. Although it is clear that Ennis and Cassie the waitress are not destined to be together, it is still a little disconcerting to see him with a woman that the audience assumes he is pretending to be infatuated with. Lee takes Ennis from the cowboy with a secret love affair and wife and children to the cowboy who dates a seemingly random waitress in platform sandals.
I agree with Sophie. You can see it in Enis' expression and the way he carroies himself that something is wrong while he's with Cassie. I think almost every relationship in the story is important because they are almost ALL the same. I am yet to see a relationship that doesn't involve fighting or being angry at least once. there are many different times where good things come out of the relationships but I feel like they are mostly conflicted. ENis' relationship with Cassie is the only one that I am yet to see a problem wiht, but to US, watching it, it is definite that they should not be together.
ReplyDeleteWhile I do agree that Lee has changed Ennis's character quite significantly, I think the end result is for the better. I think Ennis's relationship with his daughters is conflicting, and Lee may have changed it so that Ennis does not seem as cold-hearted and distant. The scene with his daughter in the car is tragic, as he firmly stops her attempt at reconnection, and she says bye with her back towards him. As for the relationship with Cassie, I merely think its meant to be a parallel of Jack and Lureen's relationship, an attempt to hide who he is.
ReplyDeleteBut I think it works.