Well I don’t know how to do much with this web stuff, so I can’t figure out how to put text next to this image.
This Jane Campion movie and the novel it’s based on, published in 1967 if you can believe — before Stonewall — is a remarkable work. The movie is very concise and mostly follows the book, almost to the letter. But there is one thing that has been pecking away at me since I first saw it three years ago, and then read the novel afterward, in part because of Annie Prouxl who was asked to advice the moviemakers.
First — the novel basically deals with closeted cowboys and hidden homosexuality. Peter is an effeminate boy who might also be something of a sociopath. Phil, the main character, appears to be an absolute hardened Montana rough neck. The book opens with him cruelly castrating a bull by more or less ripping its balls off with his bare hands. That scene is replicated later in the movie. It’s a shocking and horrific opening, but one of the reasons I think Thomas Savage is a unsung genius is because it more or less explains the main character, at least at the start of the novel, in a single, violent and shocking scene. He treats people the way he wants to treat himself, and he would, at least in the public world, like to rip his own balls off so he could stop feeling.
Second — Phil constantly talks about a dead cowboy named Bronco Henry and he keeps the dead man’s saddle oiled and clean in the horse barn. The cowpokes around him are constantly asking about Bronco Henry and he has nothing but praises for his former master. Eventually in the movie and in the book, you realize that he and Bronco Henry were in love. But the moviemakers, through no fault of their own, couldn’t figure out from the novel whether or not there was an actual sexual relationship between Bronco Henry and Phil. That’s when they asked Annie Proulx to chime in. She read the book and said something like, “Read the first pages of chapter xyz.” And the entire two or three pages of that chapter is about sapling trees — willows or something — intertwining endlessly, dropping their seeds on the ground where more trees grew and intertwined with others, fertilizing each other…. you get the gist. It’s an absolutely astounding way of dealing with the issues of 1967, and maybe our own time as well — how to write about gay sex without explicitly calling it gay sex. Anyway, this cove, which is almost like an egg, is impenetrable except for one narrow tunnel — more sexual imagery. Phil uses the cove to masturbate and rub himself with clothing of Bronco Henry.
And in the movie — I don’t remember if this is in the book — Peter, the sissy, accidentally discovers Phil’s secret cove and then finds a stash of “physique” magazines. I looked up the date of one of them and it was accurate. Body builder magazines began around 1899, maybe a bit earlier. But they are all labeled B.H. (Bronco Henry), so they all date back to around 1904 when Bronco Henry died.
Now this is what sticks in my craw, after that long intro. The movie takes place in 1925 and Phil keeps goading his brother George to remember what was special about this particular cattle drive. George can’t remember, because he’s a little dim, (but also kind,) and Phil reminds him that it was 25 years ago that Bronco Henry first taught them how to do a cattle drive. Neither Phil nor George have ever married and neither have children. We learn that Phil was educated at Yale or Harvard (I can’t remember), so he’s not really a young one. Their parents, who they call Old Gent and Old Lady, have retired and moved to Salt Lake City. So George and Phil are both 25 + x: x being their age in 1900. On a plaque above Bronco Henry’s saddle is his birth and death date: 1864 to 1904. He was 50 when he died in 1904. Which also means, I think, that he was 46 when he first took Phil and George on their first cattle drive in 1900.
So the math kind of works out like this for Phil:
25 + 0 = he was 0 when he met and had sex with Bronco Henry — not possible.
25 + 15 = Currently 40 years old.
25 + 20 = Currently 45 years old.
and so on. What isn’t easy is that we never learn how old the brothers are in 1925.
But judging by the parent’s age, the fact that neither brother is married or has children (and they share the same bedroom at the start of the movie, like children) and Kirsten Duntz’s son’s age — high school and then prep school — which makes her about 35 or older — the brothers have to be pushing 40 in 1925. Which means Phil was 15 in 1900 and Bronco Henry was 46. My guess is that the brothers were younger. Which makes the whole story about the victim of a pedophile — a willing victim. But the strange thing about the movie and the book, and maybe this is because they couldn’t write about this stuff in 1967, Phil gave his entire life — devoted his entire being — to a dead man, because that dead man taught him how to feel and love. And then to prove he wasn’t a pansy, he turned his back on it.