How Brokeback affected me

[JohnJay]

I think some have been too progressive for that generation.  Even though we can see what's going on and understand it all I don't think Jack nor Ennis fully knew what was happening to them.  They were brought up to shun that type of thing.  I am surprised that they were together as much as they were considering.  Throughout the entire movie with all the angst and fear and repression as well as passion, secrecy and audacity, Neither Jack nor Ennis ever said the words, "I LOVE YOU".  Never were they uttered in the entire film.  This tells me that either what they were feeling was still very internalized that they didn't know that they actually loved each other OR they were deathly afraid of admitting it.

This is true of many in my generation (15 yrs younger than Jack & Ennis), and certainly of many gays in their generation:  We grew up closeted, fearing our feelings,  and many full of self-loathing.  They felt love, but to admit that and say it out loud would be to admit to something they grew up learning to hate.  Certainly they understood their feelings for each other... and each other knew.  At their first parting, Ennis doubles over and almost gets sick over Jack's leaving.  That wasn't about sex, that was love... probably the first time he realized to himself the true life-altering meaning of those feelings... and that terrified him.  Admitting it, saying "I love you" out loud for anyone else to hear (even Jack) would be just too much.  Jack might have been more open to say it... but probably knew Ennis really wouldn't want to hear it.   But they knew.   Gay guys growing up today, in this post-Ellen, Will and Grace world may have a lot of the fears and worries about being different, but its probably not as much self-hate as an older generation.  Today, there are gays on TV, role models, etc.  Back then, we were meant to believe we really didn't exist.

[jakelikethat]

garry - i agree.  i tried to siphon off some of this in my vignette, "unspoken". 

this is annie's genius - and other writers would do well to follow her lead - that she embraces the theory that "less is more".  the story as written is so spare, so lean... and yet suggestive of such rich depths, such hidden layers.  this is what literature should be.  the movie feeds off this, and is all the more brilliant for it.   

i am of the firm opinion that ennis DID tell jack that he loved him.  he said it in his own way, of course.  i believe that when he wrote on the back of jack's first postcard, "you bet" - that was it.  that was ennis saying "i love you jack." 

naturally, there are many interpretations of this, and this is the understated genius of the story and the movie - that you can find your own story within it.  it's not spelled out for you as though you're a grade 5 student.  it's not a harlequin novel.  it's intricate, subtle, unknowable as love itself. 

i may be in the minority but i do not believe that the final "jack - i swear" was ennis saying i love you.  i think he loved jack from the very beginning and i think it was a case of "you had me at hallo" for both of them.  ennis wasn't one for words ("hell, them's more words than i've spoke in a year") - but his actions speak volumes.   i think it is telling that ennis asks alma jr. "does he love you?"  - this is his only concern, that alma jr. has found real love. 

[jakelikethat]

furthermore, if i'm a straight woman, why do i have this appalling tendency to flirt with chicks??



jake

Isn't one of the lessons of BBM that we should eliminate the boxes and labels...like straight and gay...and allow our inate sensuality to dictate our responses to other human beings?

yes, that's what i meant, exactly.

how come you can say it so much better than me???   

[Garry_LH]

“i may be in the minority but i do not believe that the final "jack - i swear" was Ennis saying i love you.  i think he loved jack from the very beginning and i think it was a case of "you had me at hallo" for both of them.  ennis wasn't one for words ("hell, them's more words than I've spoke in a year") - but his actions speak volumes.   i think it is telling that ennis asks alma jr. "does he love you?"  - this is his only concern, that alma jr. has found real love.”

We agree on this one. 'I swear'. In reading these posts, I have come to wonder did Ennis in some way thinks he was protecting Jack from the tire iron by not living with him? It might have been part of it, but there is so much more to these characters. So much implied rather than stated. It is a good part of the power and the beauty of Brokeback Mountain.  That last painful line, 'I swear'.  I think.  'I swear if I had it all to do again... Jack you and me would've had that little place together. I would'ah made sure you know how much I love you, just like these shirts have made me see how much you loved me.'
 
For it is in that last scene with Alama Jr., we see Ennis does finally and fully understand what love really means. And, the price he has paid in trying to deny it.
Garry

[JohnJay]

“i may be in the minority but i do not believe that the final "jack - i swear" was Ennis saying i love you.  i think he loved jack from the very beginning and i think it was a case of "you had me at hallo" for both of them.  ennis wasn't one for words ("hell, them's more words than I've spoke in a year") - but his actions speak volumes.   i think it is telling that ennis asks alma jr. "does he love you?"  - this is his only concern, that alma jr. has found real love.”

We agree on this one. 'I swear'. In reading these posts, I have come to wonder did Ennis in some way thinks he was protecting Jack from the tire iron by not living with him? It might have been part of it, but there is so much more to these characters. So much implied rather than stated. It is a good part of the power and the beauty of Brokeback Mountain.  That last painful line, 'I swear'.  I think.  'I swear if I had it all to do again... Jack you and me would've had that little place together. I would'ah made sure you know how much I love you, just like these shirts have made me see how much you loved me.'
 
For it is in that last scene with Alama Jr., we see Ennis does finally and fully understand what love really means. And, the price he has paid in trying to deny it.
Garry

Geez, Garry!  I'd just started to regain my composure and some emotional stability after seeing BBM yesterday for the first time.  And then I go and read your post... and there I go blubbering again  .

[snuffle007]

This film has really affected me. I saw it 9 times at the cinema (Never seen a film more than twice at the cinema and this was the only one I've been to alone!)

I can't seem to get it out of my head. I am obsessed with it. I think because it makes me think about all the regrets I have. Things I wish I had done differently, the wasted time.

It is also a beautiful look at love. These two men love each other so completely but because of society, can't be together. But that doesn't make their love any less important.

This film is like a knife in the heart too. You so want a happy ending for them, but when you don't get it, you left feeling so miserable, like it had happened to you.

Wonderful, wonderful film. It deserved all the awards it got and all the ones it didn't!!!

[Garry_LH]

Ok, so like am I the only one, that after having a rather good week without the tears, well, today is like it wont quit. This mourning process, dragging up my own past and flogging it about, rising back up to where I see the love and possibilities in my own life, gain a bit more awareness of who I'm about and what I want, only to find myself falling back into my own tears, just to have this all keep happening, as each time I gain more of a real sense of self, and these cycles slowing diminish in one place, as they take on new depths of meaning in other areas of my life.... And, what you mean run on sentences?
:-) Garry

[Redbrit]

I think fear lies behind Ennis's decision far more than any other consideration. However unprogressive the times - and by the time that confrontation has happened we're into the '70s I think, people have found ways to work around difficult relationships throughout history - even in situations more oppressive than that. Just think of the look on Ennis's face when that truck passes by so far away on the road. He scared of even being seen with Jack. It is that fear that dominates throughout. The very fact that it seems so impossible for Ennis and Jack to settle down together and continue to see their kids is itself an indictment of the society they live in - and to that extent it is not the right choice. How can Ennis's being forever miserable and unavailable, heartbroken and unable even to speak of his heartbreak supposed to be a good thing for Alma Jr.?

[jakelikethat]

am i alone in thinking that on some level, alma jr. knows? 

god, i love this forum.

garry - i dig it.  we're all in this together, man.



jake

[BayCityJohn]

I don't cry over Jack's death. I certainly feel the loss, but I stopped crying over death a long time ago. I went to 39 funerals in 1989 alone. When my friend Jim died in 1991 I couldn't cry. By this time death lost it's power and I'm fine with that.

What gets me crying is when Ennis pushes Jack away during the argument. I did that so many times in my life. No matter how many times I see this scene (30 times now)  it will always be like that.

I sit through the phone call knowing what Ennis is going through because I've been there, but I'm not sure what I'm really feeling. I don't cry. It's not sadness. I just feel numb at this point.

But every time he finds those shirts the tears come back.

[Cameron816]

am i alone in thinking that on some level, alma jr. knows? 

god, i love this forum.

garry - i dig it.  we're all in this together, man.

jake

Yes I felt she knew.  At the bar with Ennis's waitress girlfriend (don't remember her name now), where the girlfriend asked Alma Jr if Ennis was the marrying type, and she replies with something to the affect she didn’t think so, or something like that..... I have a strong sense it didn't matter to her; she loved her Dad.  Alma Jr is the only member of his family that shows up late in the film.  I would like to think because of that special bond, he would one day open up to her and express a love he once had, with a man named Jack Twist.

[hayek_uk]

In the movie Jack never learns about Ennis's breakdown in Signal following their first parting 20 years earlier, which in the short story Ennis confesses to upon their initial reunion. 

I too have missed the absence in the film of some of the talk from the motel scene, and we know that this was the one part of the screenplay that Annie P. sought (unsuccessfully) to modify.

Ennis indeed tells Jack that he understood (eventually) why he experienced violent stomach cramps when he parted from Jack that first Summer – that he should never have let Jack out of his sight (such a heartfelt cry of anguish, speaking devotion and need, mistaken choice and ineluctable circumstance, that place the imperative of lifelong pairing ahead of any specific social form it might take – the very quintessence of romantic love.)

In the film though the stomach crams are transferred forwards into their proper place in the time line, and we see the episode. By showing us it is true Jack isn't told, but what we see is far more intense than the story can suggest, because of Heath L’s extraordinary performance. The smashing violence with which he punches the wall is one of the most intense and terrifying moments in the film – is Ennis going to bust up or explode there and then? And he adds more pain and anguish, with  and violent defensiveness, when he shouts at the passing cowboy (who is curious? concerned?) “What the fuck are you looking at”. It truly encapsulates Ennis’s whole situation: raw, fighting himself, and himself projected onto others. Those punches, landing on the wall with knuckle-stripping force, so soon after poor Jack has been laid out with the same fists. Is Ennis smashing at his  numbness? lacerating himself in sheer uncomprehending misery? We see how profound the experience has been, how massive the impact of parting - far more than Ennis, or anyone, could ever say. From that moment on we know it is going against Ennis's fundamental nature to be parted from Jack, and when they meet again it is bound to have seismic consequences.

[tacitus]

With all due respect, I do not think that Ennis just sent him packing.  This is one of the scenes that keeps flashing back to me, over and over.  It brought up a few things in me.  First, you see the juxtaposition of the characters in the scene, Ennis is in the middle between his girls and Jack.  I remember him standing there and looking at his girls and then at Jack.  The man wants to tear himself into two parts so that he can be with both of them.  One of the reasons that I liked Ennis so much was that he wouldn't turn his back on his children.  I have abandonment issues from childhood that I will not discuss even here, but I can tell you that if he had left those little girls I never would have forgiven him for it.  I loved and respected how he felt about them. I think that, next to Jack, they were the little loves of his life.  Parents sometimes have to sacrifice their own happiness for their children.  You know in that scene that Ennis wants to be with Jack, you can see it in his eyes when he tells Jack how sorry he is.  Everyone thinks Jack is the hero, and I do like Jack myself, but Ennis is the one who got into my heart and soul.  He lives and breathes inside me because there is something deep that he touched.  I am not sure what that is yet, but I know the realization will come in time.  Ennis did the right thing and maybe people here don't like it or understand it, but I do.  If he had left those little girls to go off with Jack, it would have scarred their little souls forever and I know what I am talking about here.  I do love that Jack made it easy for him, as he always did, by not showing his disappointment to Ennis.  It's only when he gets in his truck and drives off that we see him break down.  It hurt me to see that and I did feel his pain.  I felt torn in two myself watching this scene.  It is so unfair that someone has to be hurt.  Wouldn't life be wonderful if we could make everyone happy in our lives and do what we want to do.  But that is not the case, there are hard and difficult choices that have to be made.  I always think about what President Kennedy said, "Life is unfair".  Never more so than in BBM.

yes, but. . . ennis' choice was not between jack twist and his daughters. the choice was between accepting jack's presence in his life in riverton or not. he couldn't accept living with jack. his daughters were not living with their father. they were visiting him on weekends once a month. they were there that weekend when jack arrived after the divorce. i just wish - we can all fantasize, can't we? - that jack had told ennis he was going on to visit his parents and he would come back on monday to spend some time with ennis.  didn't happen. not because jack was forcing ennis to choose between him and his girls but because ennis could not let jack into his life in riverton. . . sad but true.x

[gary-bbm]

With all due respect, I do not think that Ennis just sent him packing.  This is one of the scenes that keeps flashing back to me, over and over.  It brought up a few things in me.  First, you see the juxtaposition of the characters in the scene, Ennis is in the middle between his girls and Jack.  I remember him standing there and looking at his girls and then at Jack.  The man wants to tear himself into two parts so that he can be with both of them.  One of the reasons that I liked Ennis so much was that he wouldn't turn his back on his children.  I have abandonment issues from childhood that I will not discuss even here, but I can tell you that if he had left those little girls I never would have forgiven him for it.  I loved and respected how he felt about them. I think that, next to Jack, they were the little loves of his life.  Parents sometimes have to sacrifice their own happiness for their children.  You know in that scene that Ennis wants to be with Jack, you can see it in his eyes when he tells Jack how sorry he is.  Everyone thinks Jack is the hero, and I do like Jack myself, but Ennis is the one who got into my heart and soul.  He lives and breathes inside me because there is something deep that he touched.  I am not sure what that is yet, but I know the realization will come in time.  Ennis did the right thing and maybe people here don't like it or understand it, but I do.  If he had left those little girls to go off with Jack, it would have scarred their little souls forever and I know what I am talking about here.  I do love that Jack made it easy for him, as he always did, by not showing his disappointment to Ennis.  It's only when he gets in his truck and drives off that we see him break down.  It hurt me to see that and I did feel his pain.  I felt torn in two myself watching this scene.  It is so unfair that someone has to be hurt.  Wouldn't life be wonderful if we could make everyone happy in our lives and do what we want to do.  But that is not the case, there are hard and difficult choices that have to be made.  I always think about what President Kennedy said, "Life is unfair".  Never more so than in BBM.

As someone who is not unfamiliar with the loss of touch with a parent (they divorced when I was nine, have had poor contact with my father since), I feel with you for your abandonment issue. I still believe that the right thing for Ennis would have been to be with Jack. When I saw this scene, I almost wanted to jump up and slap Ennis: Don't you see that you can have both (your daughters and Jack)?! I know, for Ennis that was unconceivable, but I believe that this was what poor ol' Jack had in mind. I don't think he just wanted to run off with Ennis, leaving everything behind. Maybe they wouldn't settle down right nextdoor, but it would be in reach for the girls (just speculation from my side, of course). But back to the subject: I'm not sure the choice Ennis made was to the best of his daughters, I think it pains Alma a lot to see him in such a state. I have only seen the movie once, but I got a distinct feeling that Alma knew, she wanted her father to be happy, and I feel that she would have encouraged him to be with Jack had she had the opportunity. As for sacrifices: parents do indeed have to give up certain things, but I believe that throwing away your own happiness will only bring you and the ones near you into trouble. It is difficult for me to see how you can be a good rolemodel for your child in such a state, and how you can find the energy to be supportive. Hell, Ennis almost refused to go to his own daughter's wedding! (luckily he took to his mind though) Please don't mistake this for egoism, but I believe that by taking care of your own happiness you have so much more to offer to the people around you. And thank God, this forum is blessed with so many nice people, all the emotional moments, it is truly a source of comfort. And happy moments.  Please keep up the good work, I so appreciate reading what other people think of, and get out of, this gem of a movie.
Gary in Belgium

[JohnJay]

am i alone in thinking that on some level, alma jr. knows? 

god, i love this forum.

garry - i dig it.  we're all in this together, man.

jake

Yes I felt she knew.  At the bar with Ennis's waitress girlfriend (don't remember her name now), where the girlfriend asked Alma Jr if Ennis was the marrying type, and she replies with something to the affect she didn’t think so, or something like that..... I have a strong sense it didn't matter to her; she loved her Dad.  Alma Jr is the only member of his family that shows up late in the film.  I would like to think because of that special bond, he would one day open up to her and express a love he once had, with a man named Jack Twist.

Wow. I had that vague feeling when I first saw it yesterday.  It just seemed like she had an insight on her Dad, and an unconditional love and understanding, and she really wanted him to be happy no matter what.  It would have been very easy for their mother to turn the kids against her ex- and their father... especially knowing what she knew.  Somehow, that didn't happen.

I almost fantasized for a fleeting instant after that scene, that Alma would be living with her dad, and say to him... "Gee Dad, you're in such a lonely state.  Why don't you ask your friend Jack to visit for a while."   And at the end (not knowing Jack is gone) after telling her Dad about her engagement... saying... "You and  your friend Jack ever gonna get together.  Does he love you?.... Mom told me""