Chris, I can see your point in that perhaps some of the details I liked needed to be left out of the movie, in the interest of reinforcing Ennis' TOTALLY blocked character. But I'm not sure. . . I think some of those little indications of his feelings for Jack might have just given him a bit more dimension and complexity, and I wouldn't have gotten so impatient with him when he just couldn't spit it out to the man he loved. But we'll never know, will we, and none of this nit-picking changes one whit the beauty and strength of this film.
Totally! So the fact that Ennis was represented in this way, and drove you to the point of frustration (just like Jack), that you think he's shallow and without emotional depth, isn't your problem with the missing declarations simply a case that the film is perhaps a little too successful? I remember seeing the film "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover" by Peter Greenaway and being repulsed by the depictions of rancid food being turned into exotic dishes (amongst other horrors). I was so incensed by these that I went into an impassioned tirade that my friends had to patiently endure for at least 15 minutes. And then it dawned on me... that my emotional response (revulsion) was exactly what the film was trying to do, and it had succeeded on a scale that I was not giving it credit for.
With Ennis, absolutely everything about him is suppressed. He cannot love Jack because he cannot
be loved by Jack, at least with any words to the effect. We are forced to view Ennis' emotions through a key-hole of small actions and reactions. It is all he is and it is his undoing. Even his final redemption is so understated that you could easily miss it. Although he manages to go and see Jack's parents and gets the shirts, are these actions in themselves his redemption? I don't think so, not yet. I don't think this happens until he asks Alma Jr if Kurt loves her, and when she says he does he has to look away as if about to cry. This [love] is what he couldn't give to Alma, and also what he could never accept from Jack. But then, at long last, he says "Jack, I swear..." as he finally admits to himself the truth and the mistakes he’d made - The End. Just my interpretation of course.
So was the depiction of Ennis excessively constrained? Absolutely, guilty as charged! But is this a bad thing or a failing when compared to the book/screenplay? Maybe. But the fact that I'm "angry" with Ennis is also the reason why I'm so affected and motivated to "learn from his mistakes". I wanted it to turn out differently too, but I just don't know if I would feel the same way if the film-Ennis was more like the book. Even Annie Proolx said in an audio interview that the film-Ennis (through Heath's performance) was more clearly "Ennis" than even she had imagined.