Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum

Alma and the second postcard

(1/3) > >>

shortfiction:
Well, maybe not the second, but the second one that we actually saw onscreen....

I'm referring to the one she finds in the mail when she comes into the apartment with a sack full of groceries.  She reads it, looks over at the bedroom  (?) with a sour expression, then folds it into the newspaper and leaves it on the table.    This finally struck me, many moons later, as a bit odd.   She knows very well who Jack is and what those "fishing trips" are all about.   Why didn't she just rip it up and throw it out? 

moremojo:
She might have been afraid of making such an empatically negative gesture as ripping up and discarding the postcard. Jack might go asking Ennis at one point, "Did you get my postcard?" One does get the impression that she's hiding the card, perhaps reflecting on what she might want to do about it later. At any rate, it's obvious that there was never any significant rupture in the correspondence (such as it was) between Ennis and Jack.

injest:

--- Quote from: shortfiction on July 16, 2007, 05:09:09 pm ---Well, maybe not the second, but the second one that we actually saw onscreen....

I'm referring to the one she finds in the mail when she comes into the apartment with a sack full of groceries.  She reads it, looks over at the bedroom  (?) with a sour expression, then folds it into the newspaper and leaves it on the table.    This finally struck me, many moons later, as a bit odd.   She knows very well who Jack is and what those "fishing trips" are all about.   Why didn't she just rip it up and throw it out? 


--- End quote ---

well we don't know how long she had lived with the knowledge. There are a lot of women that have cheating husbands that they stay with. Remember we are looking at this thru our eyes....decades after the sexual revolution.

In that time and in that place she didn't have a lot of choices. If she confronted Ennis about the card what would have happened to her and her children? At that time being divorced was a scandal. A shame especially on the woman. I think she didn't get the courage to do anything until she became involved with Malone. and not necessarily an affair but knowing he was interested in her.

chowhound:
I agree, in the movie it looks as though Alma is actively concealing the postcard, at least for the time being, but in the script her actions are far more neutrall:

Alma enters, puts down a grocery bag, sorts through the mail. There's an electric bill and, beneath it, a postcard addressed to Ennis. She studies the postcard, then puts it back down on the pile of mail as she hears Ennis truck pull up.

In any case, Ennis must have got the postcard.

On the IMBd board I have started a thread on Alma, Jack and Ennis to explore how much Alma knew or could understand about Jack and Ennis. A modern woman who sees her husband kissing another man as passionately as Alma saw Ennis kissing Jack would certainly know exactly what was going on but did Alma? I'm not sure she did. As well, this incident with the postcard comes quite early - in 1969 to be precise. Her trick with the note and the creel case comes later, in 1972 or73.

injest:
I don't think she knew very much at all. She was from an isolated area and had little contact with the outside world.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page