Ei mikä tahansa rakkaustarina
Not just any love story
[Update: link added to DM's story]
Nähty on. Illalla osui käsiin Daniel Mendelsohnin hieno artikkeli The New York Review of Books -lehdessä (23.2.2006). Kirjoittaja ihmettelee, miksi kriitikoista alkaen kaikki toistelevat toistelemasta päästyäänkin, että Brokeback Mountain on kuin mikä tahansa rakkaustarina, jonka päähenkilöt nyt vain sattuvat olemaan miehiä. Mendelsohnin mukaan elokuvan tiimoilta lehdistölle jaetussa 49-sivuisessa lehdistöpaketissa ei käytetä päähenkilöistä sanoja "gay" tai "homosexual" yhtään kertaa. Uskomattomalta tosiaan tuntuu, vaikken jaakaan Mendelsohnin käsitystä, jonka mukaan Brokeback Mountain ei oikeastaan ole rakkaustarina ollenkaan. Onhan traagisiakin rakkaustarinoita, ja pieleen menneitä, ja hiekalle ja illuusioille rakennettuja.
Mendelsohn päättää:
If you insist, as so many have, that the story of Jack and Ennis is OK to watch and sympathize with because they are not really homosexual - that they're more like the heart of America than like "gay people" - you are pushing them back into the closet whose narrow and suffocating confines Ang Lee and his collaborators have so beautifully and harrowingly exposed."
Frenshamin maineikkaasta yksityisestä tyttökoulusta oli elokuviin lähetetty kokonainen luokallinen teini-ikäisiä nuoria naisia. Hatunnosto opettajalle. Miten minusta tuntuu, että yksityisen poikakoulun opetusohjelmaan Brokeback Mountain ei ehkä olisi livahtanut.
Miten hienosti novelli voikaan muuttua elokuvaksi! Romaanifilmatisoinnit ovat usein suuria kompromisseja - paremman esimerkin puutteessa viittaan taas Ylpeyteen ja ennakkoluuloon, joka ei minusta mitenkään mahdu yhteen elokuvaan. Vaikka hiljattain Ian McEwanin Ikuista rakkautta elokuvaksi muokattaessa oli minusta kyllä onnistuttu.
***
So we finally made it to the movies. Afterwards, I read an impressive article by Daniel Mendelsohn (The New York Review of Books 23.2.2006), in which he is pretty much appalled by the way everyone, starting from film critics in quality papers, insists that Brokeback Mountain is a universal love story, in which the two lovers "just happen to be men". According to Mendelsohn, the 49-page press kit distributed to critics never uses the words "gay" or "homosexual" about the two main characters. Very strange, though hardly surprising. I don't quite share Mendelsohns view about Brokeback Mountain not really being a love story, though. Love stories can be tragic, difficult, and based on illusions. I mean, Gone with the Wind is described as a love story, isn't it? Incredible.
Mendelsohn concludes:
If you insist, as so many have, that the story of Jack and Ennis is OK to watch and sympathize with because they are not really homosexual - that they're more like the heart of America than like "gay people" - you are pushing them back into the closet whose narrow and suffocating confines Ang Lee and his collaborators have so beautifully and harrowingly exposed."
There seemed to be a whole class of girls from the private Frensham school in the cinema. Well done, teacher! Why do I think that they wouldn't have sent a class from a private boys' school?
I found myself thinking how much better a short story translates into a film than a novel. It was all there - with the exception of some of the more graphic sexual details in Annie Proulx's text. Compare this to the violence that has to be done to, say, (my favourite example) Pride and prejudice in order to fit it in 2.5 hours. (I did think they did rather well with Ian McEwan's Enduring Love recently, though.)