Topic: BBM Ambiguities - A discussion (possible spoilers)

[welshwitch]

It's also frightfully literal-minded.  Being queer is a sin akin to murder, and perpetrators are best destroyed.This guy has been destroyed; if you act like him, the same will happen to you.

Comes out of a moralisitic culture that sets a fairly low value on life and a very high value on conformity with prevailing social mores.

[FulOfSadness]

WOW, today was my first day of school, so i went to bed earlier. Well at 12:30 AM i woke up and i couldn't go back to sleep (I have to get up for school at 6:00 am!) anyways i was thinking about Brokeback, and i just lost it. I don't know if it was mixed feelings with my nervousness, but I literally cried all night, just thinking about that picture of Brokeback Mountain on Ennis's closet. Its so sad, because thats when they were young and happy, and they had no fear in the world. Here i go again crying.  :\'( this movie has f***ed me up (sorry for the language, but really its appopriate this time) I couldn't stop crying, so i stayed up all night, not getting any sleep for school in the morning. Brokeback has ruined any chance of a normal living for me now . I kinda like it, but god, i was so depressed last night, it was too overwhelming. In my signature, the lyrics from SOLITUDE, well, i cried at that part, when i tried to listen to music. Brokeback is too much fer me, it should be illegal for people as young as me to watch this film, because if it effects them even as half as it has done to me (i'm 16 yrs. old) than idk how'll they'll be okay to go on with school, and everything in between

[tpe]

WOW, today was my first day of school, so i went to bed earlier. Well at 12:30 AM i woke up and i couldn't go back to sleep (I have to get up for school at 6:00 am!) anyways i was thinking about Brokeback, and i just lost it. I don't know if it was mixed feelings with my nervousness, but I literally cried all night, just thinking about that picture of Brokeback Mountain on Ennis's closet. Its so sad, because thats when they were young and happy, and they had no fear in the world. Here i go again crying.  :\'( this movie has f***ed me up (sorry for the language, but really its appopriate this time) I couldn't stop crying, so i stayed up all night, not getting any sleep for school in the morning. Brokeback has ruined any chance of a normal living for me now . I kinda like it, but god, i was so depressed last night, it was too overwhelming. In my signature, the lyrics from SOLITUDE, well, i cried at that part, when i tried to listen to music. Brokeback is too much fer me, it should be illegal for people as young as me to watch this film, because if it effects them even as half as it has done to me (i'm 16 yrs. old) than idk how'll they'll be okay to go on with school, and everything in between

Sometimes, I also can't make out whether I am happier or more sad, post-BBM.  But whatever the ambivalence in our feelings for being totally consumed by this film and story, I think I know that we are a bit richer for the experience.

[FulOfSadness]

I just realized i posted this in the wrong section

[welshwitch]

Not really - it's actually in the right section, because it's all about ambiguity. Are we better off for reacting as we do, or would our lives be easier if we didn't feel so affected by the movie?

[MississaugaRed]

Not really - it's actually in the right section, because it's all about ambiguity. Are we better off for reacting as we do, or would our lives be easier if we didn't feel so affected by the movie?

Good question, welshwitch.

I also find myself stymied, time and time again, when people ask me why I love BBM (the movie) so much.  I can't sort out an answer, because the reasons run through too many different rivers for me to sum up.  All the ambiguities that we love, how do you sort them out to "briefly" explain where the power of BBM comes from??

[tpe]

Good question, welshwitch.

I also find myself stymied, time and time again, when people ask me why I love BBM (the movie) so much.  I can't sort out an answer, because the reasons run through too many different rivers for me to sum up.  All the ambiguities that we love, how do you sort them out to "briefly" explain where the power of BBM comes from??

I agree.  I hit upon the same problem myself.  A lot of people who have seen the movie once seem to have missed a lot of the subtleties and hence are not comfortable with the ambiguities.  A typical reaction I encounter is that the movie/story is ill-formed or an incomplete torso at best.  I find this typical of the summer blockbuster crowd who likes their endings tied up neatly...

 

[welshwitch]

BBM is too quiet, mostly, and too slow-moving, on the surface at least, to appeal to the multiplex blockbuster crowd - not enolugh CGI and noise and car-crash-type violence. It's subtle - the movement is often psychological not physical and the important issues aren;t speele out in fluorescent block capitals - there's also so much unspoken "dialogue" so that you have to listen and extrapolate - deduce too, as a lot of what happens is less than obvious.

It's the difference between fast food and Michelin-starred cooking, taking time to make and appreciate, complex and multi-layered.

[jesseanne21]

Good question, welshwitch.

I also find myself stymied, time and time again, when people ask me why I love BBM (the movie) so much.  I can't sort out an answer, because the reasons run through too many different rivers for me to sum up.  All the ambiguities that we love, how do you sort them out to "briefly" explain where the power of BBM comes from??

I agree.  I hit upon the same problem myself.  A lot of people who have seen the movie once seem to have missed a lot of the subtleties and hence are not comfortable with the ambiguities.  A typical reaction I encounter is that the movie/story is ill-formed or an incomplete torso at best.  I find this typical of the summer blockbuster crowd who likes their endings tied up neatly...

Welshwitch and TPE - I agree with you both...most people seem to like movies that they forget about as soon as they leave the theater.  They want a neat, happy ending and real life just ain't like that.  I love that thoughts about BBM wake me up in the middle of the night and scenes from the movie come back to me without any prompting.  The movie haunts me...it's amazing.

[MississaugaRed]

Welshwitch and TPE - I agree with you both...most people seem to like movies that they forget about as soon as they leave the theater.  They want a neat, happy ending and real life just ain't like that.  I love that thoughts about BBM wake me up in the middle of the night and scenes from the movie come back to me without any prompting.  The movie haunts me...it's amazing.

Agreed! 

But try explaining why to the uninitiated in just a couple of sentences ...  doubt it can be done.     We've LaShawned to the tune of close to a quarter million posts ... and still haven't said it all. 

I get tongue-tied trying to answer the question "why BBM?" to non-brokies. It's easy with the CGI type films, as welshwitch says.  People understand "Oh me like big bang explosion". 

They don't always understand "I love that I have to really think hard and feel hard and could spend hours shifting through the layers of a single sentence to get at the richness beneath".   

You get a cross-eyed reaction, usually, you say something like that to the average movie goer.

[tpe]

Welshwitch and TPE - I agree with you both...most people seem to like movies that they forget about as soon as they leave the theater.  They want a neat, happy ending and real life just ain't like that.  I love that thoughts about BBM wake me up in the middle of the night and scenes from the movie come back to me without any prompting.  The movie haunts me...it's amazing.

Yes, for me, the movies that are most memorable are those that are the most haunting.  And those that haunt me are those that don't tie all the knots.  It is like the space between dreaming and waking -- you do not question, and yet much remains unknown.