Western Genre Masterpiece Full of Chinese Aesthetics

Rating: 10/10 (16 August 2006)

"Brokeback Mountain" is a beautiful, faithful, and moving film-adaptation of Annie Proulx's short story. The film conveys intact and true the overall mood and emotional fullness from Proulx's terse narrative, even though not every scene nor all of the dialogue from the short story has been translated into the film verbatim (although a great majority of the dialogue and description has). This is understandable given the different natures of the two media. Inner psychological reflections and some physical descriptions in the written word can be difficult to portray on film cinematographically in photorealism, or may have been considered too graphic for such an artistic movie. If nothing else, this film is very tastefully done. To fully appreciate the film, one may wish to read and compare the short story, and view it at least two or three times to catch all of the subtleties, beginning from the very first scene.
Reflective of their time and social environment, the nonverbal Western (as well as "Asian") cultural trait, the characters exhibit a reticence to address controversial or sensitive matters too directly. Hence, the filmmakers employ metaphoric allusions, subtle, nuanced facial and physical expressions or vocal inflections (e.g., an eyebrow raised, a stolen glance, a longing look, or avoidance of eye contact hiding behind hats, a lingering touch, or a pregnant pause) to convey unsaid or unsay-able thoughts or emotions as a projection of repression. Even though unsaid or conveyed indirectly, an observant viewer will understand completely the emotions and feelings that are being communicated.
As one viewer's impressions, given that director Ang Lee is Chinese (Taiwan), he imbues throughout the entire film an "Asian" or "Chinese" aesthetic. For instance, there seems to be a particular framing of the landscape reminiscent of classical Chinese paintings, or incorporation of parallel and complementary scenes as well as so-called "bookend" scenes, like Chinese rhyming couplets. Often times when Jack and Ennis are together, every view of the moon is of a full moon, which not only signifies passage of time - usually only one full moon per month - but also in Chinese culture has connotations of wholeness and completeness. Thus, Jack and Ennis symbolically are two halves of a whole - yin and yang. The black and white hats, may actually reflect the yin and yang natures of Jack and Ennis, respectively. One can say that Jack is predominately "psychologically feminine," while Ennis is "psychologically masculine".
Yin and yang are descriptions of complementary opposites rather than absolutes. Most forces in nature can be broken down into their respective yin and yang states, and the two are usually in movement rather than held in absolute stasis. As in the traditional, circular yin-yang symbol, part of yin is also in yang, and part of yang is in yin, which is symbolized as a dot of each one in the other respectively. The dots in each serves as a reminder that there are always traces of one in the other. For example, there is always light within the dark (e.g., the stars at night); these qualities are never completely one or the other. Also, the dots serve as a reminder that absolute extreme on one part transforms instantly into the opposite, or that the labels yin and yang are conditioned by an observer's point of view. For example, the hardest stone can be easiest to break. This can show that absolute discrimination between the two is artificial.