Module: Postgraduate Life in Practice

Course: M.A. in Film and English Literature

Topic: Beyond Words and Dialogue in Film Adaptation: Analysing the

Soundscape of Brokeback Mountain

Submitted by: Cheshta Dhawan

Referencing System Used: M.L.A.

Word Count: 1577

On a cold summer evening in 1963, a dozy Jack Twist stands near an ember-filled campfire,
his eyes half shut. He is alone, but not lonely. In the cool mountain air, a pair of arms cradle
him warmly and his breath entwines with that of his companion, Ennis Del Mar. Nothing else
matters to Jack as that moment settles. The camera zooms out to show us a horse and the vast
landscape of Brokeback Mountain where their summer has been spent. A guitar twangs in the
background; a soft melody eases in. Multiple moments settle as Ennis hums the once familiar
tune his mother used to sing. As Ennis gets ready to leave, the camera pans across Jack’s
face, half smiling, half asleep, completely in love, watching Ennis ride away. Cut to the
present - 1983 - as an older Jack watches Ennis’s truck disappear onto the road after a bitter
spat. The memory of that long-lost embrace is palpable for Jack - nearly tangible enough for
him to touch. The guitar continues strumming in the background. The camera flashes
forward.

Fig. 1 (Brokeback-Mountain-1275 )

Surely the cinematic screen holds the power to evoke emotion in the real world, but every
once in a while, a few movies truly make one reflect upon how powerful this sentiment really
is. Brokeback Mountain (2005), for this very reason, holds a special place in contemporary
cinema with three Academy Award wins out of seven Academy nominations! Set in the style
of the almost sacred American Western, it’s a rather gut-wrenching story about ranchmen
Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) in a society that quashes
their unspoken, closeted love. Adapted from Annie Proulx’s story in a “tight, compressed
style that needs air” (McMurtry et al. 2005) by Ang Lee, it depicts the lead pair’s parallel,
separate lives that sometimes intersect over two decades. In this essay, I aim to analyse how
the adaptation’s soundtrack engages the spectator emotionally and enables a richer audio-
visual experience for its audience.

The Role of Background Music in Enhancing Narratives

Getting adaptations right is fairly difficult, especially with sparse dialogue. But therein also
lies the creative challenge to present the story in a novel manner. Proulx’s original story is
told from a third person narrator’s perspective with a ‘focalization’ towards Ennis - a memoir
of the years he spent with and without Jack. Though short, it immaculately describes the
characters’ feelings throughout. The raw, lyricist writing style takes the form of background
music in the movie. It not only heightens the film’s visual imagery, but also makes the
shifting of the medium more explicit. (Westergård 2009). Visuals drive audience reactions to
a great degree, however, the aural is just as important. This point makes itself apparently
clear in the opening scene of the film itself. We see the morning dawn in a “glassy orange,
stained from below by a gelatinous band of pale green” (Proulx, 1997), with the sound of an
acoustic guitar playing in the background as Ennis dismounts the truck.

Fig. 2 (Brokeback-Mountain-0001 )

The notes are sharp and clean, inspired from the slow, romanticised style of country music -
they make the setting of the plot amply clear before we see our ranchman. Michel Chion’s
argument about film being an audio-visual exercise holds true, as the context of time and
place come into the audience’s view at the end of the shot. The music has already established
that country roads, the vastness of the mountains and glassy skies will become important for
Ennis hereon.
Santaolalla’s Genius: Diegetic and Extradiegetic Music
In the analysis of the score that sets this soundtrack apart, the most critical lens to put on is
that of tonality, i.e., the recurring musical pattern that highlights its mood. The soundscapes
of Brokeback Mountain find a distinct place in the narrative and form a key part of the tale.
The characters’ journey from the written word to the screen is made more real, much more
intimate for the audience with Santaolalla’s Oscar winning use of diegetic and extradiegetic
music that bridges the passage of time and builds continuity in interspersing montages. It also
tells us more about our leads: Jack, with his harmonica, makes music - he’s open about his
feelings for Ennis and his sexuality which is “nobody’s business but ours” (Lee, 2005).
Ennis, on the other hand, is the wilderness possessing, strong, silent, true American Western
hero - far from anything remotely musical.

Thus, the “music does more than define emotion - it generates it.” (Kalinak 2010).The
extradiegetic notes are stringed, slow and filled with long pauses, leaving enough room for us
to hold our breath as the beauty of the mountain unfolds before us. In the 60s, we see Jack
and Ennis herding sheep and undertaking daily chores along with a tranquil guitar melody.
The sheep are safe, the mountain is kind, life is good. Their first real conversation about their
past brings with it a slightly more sombre, muted harmony. These melodies will recur later in
the film (70s and 80s), during their “fishing trips” when the high-altitude shots and long
camera pans will remind the viewer that this is the ranchmen’s happy place - it is only here
that peace exists, in the arms of nature and each other.

Fig 3: (Brokeback-Mountain-0066
At roughly the quarter mark of the movie, after their first sexual encounter, the music turns
almost ominous with long, faded cello and violin tunes as Ennis comes to terms with the
previous night’s events. There is no verbal dialogue about this, but it establishes his guilt and
confusion and “the disquieting way everything seemed mixed” (Proulx, 1997)
Fig 4: (Brokeback-Mountain-0325 )

The soundtrack also makes an important case for the women in the movie. The aural and
visual imagery of the film puts forth the perspective of their wives as well, the essence of
which is missed out upon in the short story. A good example of this would be the scenes
depicting the initial stages of Ennis and Alma’s marriage. The acoustic and electric guitar’s
harmony is simple yet hopeful, even happy. Parallelly, Jack is rodeoing in Texas where he
meets Lureen and is serenaded during their dance to “No One’s Gonna Love You Like Me”.
This is the first clear usage of diegetic sound in the film, where this relationship feels the
slightest bit promising.

Fig 5: (Brokeback-Mountain-0717 )

Cut to 1967, when our leads meet each other after four years, in a bone crushing hug and
feverous kiss - the melody is similar to the ones we’ve heard at Brokeback, but sadder,
angrier and louder as Alma discovers them kissing. She’s quiet, but the harsh strum of the
guitar tells us that things will now begin to go south.
Fig 6: (Brokeback-Mountain-0830 )
Perhaps the best example of diegetic music is the sequence where Jack drives to Wyoming
after hearing about Ennis’s divorce, blasting “The King of the Road” on his car stereo,
whistling euphorically. When he learns that he misinterpreted the divorce, and that Ennis is
still on the fence about their relationship, a few seconds later, he drives back 1200 miles, this
time to Mexico, while listening to “A Love That Will Never Grow Old.” The lyrics, hardly
audible through his sniffles, are representative of his hope for a future with Ennis, with the
sour realisation that it may never happen. This creates the perfect example of Brokeback
Mountain’s auditory ambivalence.

Fig. 7: (Brokeback-Mountain-1035 )

“If the movie is a romance, so is the song. It speaks more for the spectator, living presumably
safely in the early years of the “enlightened” twenty first century, than it does for either of the
film’s paired men...A Love That Will Never Grow Old is not their song, but the spectator’s.”
(Tsika, 2007)

Listening Carefully: Where Silence Fits In

Saltaolalla utilizes silence, and in particular, the ambivalent sounds of the wind to establish
the film’s mood effectively. It is as important as the guitars and the cellos and the carefully
crafted songs - it supports the pensiveness of society that overshadows Jack and Ennis. In the
scene of their first sexual encounter, there is no background music at all - their raw, sexual
desire for each other is heard in their grunts, as the tent lays still on the outside. Four years
later, they lie together in a motel reminiscing how “Old Brokeback got us good” (Lee, 2005).

While in most places, this silence feels almost comfortable, the only place it stings is when
decades worth of unsaid emotion hurls itself at both of them in their final bitter fight. Jack
will remember the embrace from 1963, and the way Ennis hummed to him, but they will not
meet again. A few months later, Ennis will have the wind knocked out of him when he calls
Jack’s wife after reading “deceased” on the postcard. Her polite, icy tone will solidify that
silence does speak louder than words. The silence will be palpable when Ennis visits Jack’s
home and sits across the table from his “stud duck” father. He will find the two shirts from
the summer of 1963, one inside the other, take them from Jack’s mother quietly and leave.

Fig. 8: (Brokeback-Mountain-1376 )
The loud strums of the guitar from Brokeback will only return in the final shot of the film -
that of the two shirts reversed, hung on a nail in an old trailer, right next to the window of
what was, and what could have been.
Works Cited

Kalinak, K. (2010). Film Music: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press.
Lee, A. (Director). (2005). Brokeback Mountain [Film]. Focus Features.
https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/005FE0B3?bcast=94769595

McMurty, L., Ossana, D., & Prolux, A. (2005). Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay.
Scribner.

Proulx, A. (1997). Brokeback Mountain. The New Yorker. Retrieved October 30, 2021, from
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1997/10/13/brokeback-mountain

Santaolalla, G. (2005). Brokeback Mountain - Original Motion Picture Score.

https://open.spotify.com/album/5GUrIS6mlz9kfnnSsit3DT?
si=FcdB3gWVTdqdHzpHTSr_Qg

Screen Musings. (n.d.). Screen Musings. Retrieved November, 2021, from

https://screenmusings.org/movie/dvd/Brokeback-Mountain/pages/Brokeback-Mountain

Tsika, N. (2007). The Queerness of the Country: Brokeback’s Soundscapes. In Reading

Brokeback Mountain. McFarland and Co.

Westergard, C. (2009). From Brokeback Mountain to Brokeback Mountain– A Critical Study

of the Adaptation Process from Short Story to Film. Retrieved October, 2021, from
https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:200890/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Blouin, M. J. (2010). Auditory Ambivalence: Music in the Western from High Noon to
Brokeback Mountain. Journal of Popular Culture, (December 2010), 73-88. Yorshare