In the segment of movie we watched today Lee shows a lot of Ennis and Alma’s life together which I think was an important thing to see, but perhaps didn’t quite have the effect he was looking for. I kept thinking about how Jack was going to come back and at that point I really didn’t want him to. I found myself becoming more and more attached to Alma and feeling sorry for her a lot of the time. What we see is a woman who is very in love with her husband, and a man who loves his wife, but loves another man more. Lee uses montage to show select scenes from their life together. Initially it seems to be that all they do is go sledding and watch movies at the drive-in, but later on we see that they have hard times too, their babies cry and pull out strategically placed bottle of peanuts. One of the most vivid descriptions in the original story is of the room where Alma gives birth and I think that with all of the scenes that are added, some of them could have been left on the cutting room floor so that one could be included. It would have been impossible to recreate the feeling that the reader gets in a film, but Lee could have at least tried.
As Naomi brought up there is an interesting parallel between Jack and Ennis’s fight and Ennis and Alma’s playful frolicking in the snow. When Jack and Ennis are fighting it seems playful at first but becomes more violent as they let out their frustration at having to leave each other. When Ennis and Alma are wrestling it is purely playful. It lacks the sense of danger and of passion that Jack and Ennis’s fight has. As an audience there is nothing that feels unsafe about it. We know that Alma isn’t going to fall and hit her head and die, and we are positive that Ennis isn’t going to punch her.
Liking Alma isn’t necessarily a bad thing but it means that when Jack comes back later, or momentarily depending on what Lee decides to shrink or expand, it will be hard to watch Alma discover her husband’s secret affair. In the original story although the reader feels a little bad for Alma, it is really a joyous occasion because Jack and Ennis are finally reunited, but in the movie after making Alma into a character that the audience (or maybe just one audience member) likes, it will be much more bittersweet.
I do feel badly for Alma in the story, although agreeable not as horrible as I feel for her in the movie. However, I still wanted Jack and Ennis to get together, and I still mentally rejoiced when they are reunited. What I was more sad and frustrated about was Ennis and his attitude toward being with Jack. Scenes such as when Jack drives down to see Ennis and then is turned away, which are only remembered in the story, actually take place in the movie. These scenes greaten the heartbreak and illuminate the pain shared by each character (especially Jack)
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