quote:Originally posted by Vogon Poetess: I would actually argue that the film can be fairly confidently classified as a Western, with regard to its setting, iconography and the way it uses a frontier/wilderness location to explore moral conflicts between the individual and society within the greater context of changing American history. I don't know if anyone is interested enough in Westerns to want to discuss this further.
See I can totally see how this would be the case, but like Kovacs I've not seen the film and so I can't really discuss it in context.
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quote:Originally posted by Dr. Benway: Westerns bore the tits off me.
Have you never watched The Wild Bunch or Django? What the fuck is wrong with you people?
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aye, I've seen the Wild Bunch. My dad always used to bang on about it. It's alright, but didn't excite me. I addmit that I do quite like High Plains Drifter and Outlaw Jonesy Whales, but overall I don't think I get Westerns. They just seem... I don't know.. dreary.
[ 17.01.2006, 05:08: Message edited by: Dr. Benway ]
quote:Originally posted by Dr. Benway: aye, I've seen the Wild Bunch. My Dad always used to bang on about it. It's alright, but didn't excite me.
If the entire Mexican army getting slaughtered by a Gatling gun doesn't excite you, I...I don't know what to say. I worry about you sometimes, Benway.
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Anyone who uses the word 'dreary' in relation to The Wild Bunch deserves to have their eyes confiscated. If one had to place everything in the universe in order of merit, then The Wild Bunch would be a long way ahead of Dr Benway.
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Louche
Carved TMO on her clit just to make you feel bad
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quote:Originally posted by Dr. Benway: but overall I don't think I get Westerns. They just seem... I don't know.. dreary.
You've obviously forgotten - or by some cruel, cruel quirk of fate never seen - the seminal and as yet unparallelled Young Guns and its similarly inspiring sequel, the fantastically imaginatively named Young Guns II. Some people may feel that the appeal of these films is based in collecting a small posse of the then brat pack of highly fuckable young male actors and chucking them together in a film where they got to wear leather trousers and bare their chests. These people are obviously wrong, as the Young Guns films are amongst the best ever made and I remain unable to comprehend how they didn't garner all the oscars they patently deserved.
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Benway you should blatantly watch The Wild Bunch again - it's got little kids playing with scorpians in it FFS - and Django.
I'd also suggest you check out Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid and Once Upon a Time in teh West and a whole fucking load of Italian stuff other than just Leone or Corbucci.
But I love Westerns.
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quote:Originally posted by Vogon Poetess: So the depiction of Wyoming affected me at a deeper personal level than the actual narrative.
That's interesting. I thought the sometimes-criticised slowness with which the plot unfolds allowed time to drink in all that visual imagery. Apparently it was shot in Canada, but Proulx has confirmed that, in terms of landscape, it's very similar to Wyoming.
quote:I liked the final song on the end credits, but thought the score throughout was a bit lame- I found the twanging gee-tar chords a bit distracting, and kinda lazy.
I recently bought the soundtrack, and would agree that there are few stand-outs, the final Willie Nelson song being pretty much it (I like Rufus Wainwright's King of the Road, but I think it's the original they use in the film). I quite liked the plangent gee-tar refrain, though. During the film, I was aware at several points of the sound of wind in the trees: I think that particular sound effect's employed almost throughout.
quote:I would actually argue that the film can be fairly confidently classified as a Western, with regard to its setting, iconography and the way it uses a frontier/wilderness location to explore moral conflicts between the individual and society within the greater context of changing American history.
Certainly in terms of setting and iconography. I'd argue that, otherwise, it's a fairly conventional romance akin to the 'weepies' of the 1950s/'60s - Sirk-era 'women's movies'.
I suppose I tend to think of Westerns in terms, also, of specific plot elements: conflicts solved or exacerbated by use of firearms; some sort of 'enemy' (even if it's the wilderness/nature itself); more of a 'circling wagons'/'defending the frontier' feel.
If, as a subsequent poster suggests, we take the 'frontier' to be a sexual one, or the prevailing cultural views of sexuality in that place at that time, then I guess one could indeed make the case for Brokeback Mountain being a Western. I still tend to think of it as a hybrid, really: a 'woman's film' in Western macho drag? A celluloid Danny the Street?
quote:I don't know if anyone is interested enough in Westerns to want to discuss this further.
I'm interested, certainly, so long as it's possible to relate discussion back to the film itself.
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quote:Originally posted by Ganesh: I'd argue that, otherwise, it's a fairly conventional romance akin to the 'weepies' of the 1950s/'60s - Sirk-era 'women's movies'.
I believe the term is melodrama.
It is certainly possible to to have a Western Melodrama.
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I think "women's pictures" in quotation marks is used quite regularly as synonymous with melodrama. It's clumsy but I suppose it's because that's what they would have been called on their release.
quote:Originally posted by kovacs: I think "women's pictures" in quotation marks is used quite regularly as synonymous with melodrama. It's clumsy but I suppose it's because that's what they would have been called on their release.
I wasn't suggesting that Ganesh was incorrect in his use of the term in his original post, I know women's pictures is generally used in film theory to describe movies like Now Voyager or Mildred Pierce, which also happen to be melodramas. I merely felt that the term melodrama was more appropriate in this context.
[ 19.01.2006, 06:33: Message edited by: Boy Racer ]
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Then again, I think I'm finding any excuse not to see a film whose gay intimacy I might find erotic, or uncomfortable, or erotically uncomfortable or vice versa.
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In context, it's actually quite a joyous kiss, a four-years-later kiss. I agree, though, that two-minute snatch (stop tittering at the back) doesn't really do the moment justice.
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