omorka | Riders of the West (Reply)

There are times when being mildly familiar with the trappings of a movie can be rewarding. Sometimes it breaks your suspension of disbelief. And sometimes it just stretches the world slightly in ways the screenwriter and director almost certainly didn't intend.

For example, in the LotR movies, the Dunedain ride differently from everyone else, whether Rohirrim, Gondorian, elvish, or otherwise. It's easy enough to come up with reasons why that might be so - differences in geography, the effect of exile, etc. For most people, it's probably only noticeable when Aragorn is riding right next to someone else and the horses are at a trot, where he's leaning back into it while Theoden and Legolas are posting.

In Brokeback, we see Jack on horseback more often than we see Ennis, and we rarely see Ennis mount or dismount the horse - most of the time, we see him on the horse standing more or less still, or at a slow walk. This gives us (or at least it gave me) the impression that Jack is the more accomplished horseman of the two, although perhaps not as much so as he brags.

In both cases, there's an absolutely practical out-of-movie reason for this; in fact, it's the same reason. Viggo Mortenson is a Western rider in New Zealand working with a motley collection of British and Australian actors, and everyone else is riding English. Heath Ledger is a pretty good rider, better than Gyllenhaal, but he was trained English style, which Ennis wouldn't have any chance of knowing. But that's no fun, now is it?