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

Double meanings: Lines that can be taken more than one way

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nakymaton:
I think the "one shot thing" line takes on a very different meaning when Ennis says it in the film. In the story, Jack's responding to Ennis's "I'm not no queer," and the whole string of responses seems like Jack's protesting a bit too much... giving a bunch of different excuses, trying to find whatever works to relieve Ennis's fears. I don't give any weight to any of them in the story. But coming from Ennis's mouth, it's something else... Ennis doesn't say much, and when he speaks, it's worth listening.

Personally, I don't think that Ennis intended to have sex with Jack again after the first time, and that Jack is trying to give a reason why they can continue. I don't think Ennis intended for the second tent scene to happen... he seems to be fighting with himself until he finally heads for the tent. And he doesn't seem sure that's what he wants until he finally begins to respond to Jack's kiss.

(I wish Mikaela were here for this conversation... I think she had an insight based on the subtitles on the version of the movie that played in her country. We had a conversation like this before, but, ummmm, I can't remember what she said. It was really good, though!)

serious crayons:

--- Quote from: nakymaton on June 05, 2006, 11:10:27 pm ---II don't think Ennis intended for the second tent scene to happen... he seems to be fighting with himself until he finally heads for the tent. And he doesn't seem sure that's what he wants until he finally begins to respond to Jack's kiss.

--- End quote ---

Man, this movie is so incredibly ambiguous. I see the exact same scene and read it as, Ennis sitting by the campfire already knows that he wants to go into the tent but he's really nervous about it -- not just because he's homophobic but because this is something he's never done before (maybe with a woman, either) and he's both excited and fearful. When he finally does go in, he is perfectly willing but it's such a foreign experience for him that he's not exactly sure how to proceed and it takes him a while to relax into it. But, with help from Jack's "s'alrights," he does!

serious crayons:

--- Quote from: goadra on June 06, 2006, 01:48:40 am ---Double meaning on the lighter side: “Your folks just stop at ‘Ennis’?” Well, actually, they did. He’s the youngest Del Mar.

--- End quote ---

Cute one, Barbara! And we definitely could use some lighter side.

Unfortunately, I'm now going to take a turn for the much heavier/darker side.

"For all I know, he done the job."

I've been thinking about how chilling that is, the way Ennis phrases it. Not "for all I know, he done that horrible crime," or even simply "for all I know, he done it." I realize this can partly be chalked up to Ennis' manner of speaking. But to call it "the job" is, at some level, to equate it with an expected or necessary task.

Now, I'm not saying Ennis thinks of it that way.  I don't believe he does. But it's like he's been conditioned not to question it as much as he should. Why wasn't he more horrified by his father's attitude? Clearly he was seriously disturbed and even traumatized by the experience of viewing the body, realizes his father's potential involvement would have been wrong, but the extent to which he outright condemns him for it is ambiguous. In other contexts, he speaks of his dad as a fairly good guy ("now my dad, he was a fine roper ... I think my dad was right.").

So that's not so much a double meaning as an ominous implication about how abusive upbringing can warp minds.

Mikaela:

--- Quote from: latjoreme on June 06, 2006, 02:47:38 am ---In other contexts, he speaks of his dad as a fairly good guy ("now my dad, he was a fine roper ... I think my dad was right.").

So that's not so much a double meaning as an ominous implication about how abusive upbringing can warp minds.

--- End quote ---


I've been thinking about this quite a lot these last few days – the relationship between Ennis and his father. How the film leads up to that absolutely crucial scene of Ennis's father dragging his sons along to see the body and teach them the lesson about what happens to “queers”. Other related topics....


While Jack starts bitching about *his* father from the get go, Ennis actually makes us like his father at first.

The first thing we learn, is that Ennis's father and mother are dead. Even though we know nothing else, that leaves us feeling sympathy towards them by extension just as we feel sympathy for Ennis. It also puts us off guard, thinkin that if Ennis is taciturn, painfully shy and insecure it may have to do with losing his parents at that crucial age –  and not with anything his parents did to him *before* they died.

Then Ennis goes on to tell us something positive about his father, a good memory – “My father was a fine roper” - and when he says that his father thought rodeo cowboys were all fuck-ups, he does it with that certain glint in his eye that somehow makes you think his father must have had the same glint in his. And “My father was right”, however much spoken in jest, also casts Ennis’s father in a positive light, through the very fact that Ennis actually says it, so in contrast to Jack’s comments about *his* father.

And then - bam! - we're hit with that incredibly ugly scene. Things are very far from being what they have seemed at the surface, and it hits the movie audience with all the more effect exactly for going so contrary to the expectations of the older Del Mar that Ennis’s words have created up till then.. We learn that not only was Ennis's father abusive and cruel to his sons, not only does Ennis think him capable of torturing another man to death and seeing it as nothing more than a job needed doing, but his attitudes (and actions, if he actually *was* one of the men who "did the job") both as specifically attributed to him as a single person and as symptomatic of the general attitudes in their time and place, were central to warping or destroying something of the most personal and precious there is in his son. It is revealed as the reason for the tragedy of Jack and Ennis as it unfolds, and forms the focal point of the entire story – the hub that many lives and the whole story revolves around.

The scene with the father and his two sons is all the more forceful because we don't ever get to see father's face - he's just this big, dark, nondescript shape forcing the two boys along, making them watch that horrible sight. The father being faceless speaks of the scene being illustrative of "general opinion" more than of one specific person's violent prejudices. And the fact that there are two boys, not just Ennis, seems a reminder that his father (and their society) wasn't particularly targeting Ennis - every boy according to the thoughts of people like Ennis's father should be taught this lesson.


It makes a sad and distorted kind of sense that Ennis *would* speak well of his father – he does after all “think his father was right” not only about Rodeo Cowboys but about “queers”, however much that means his daddy would have killed him too for being what he is. Ennis himself keeps beating himself up over “this thing” inside him…... The internalized homophobia in Ennis does indeed seem to make him somewhat ambivalent about his father's action - it seems difficult for him to forcefully condemn the means when he's so much in tune with the end.  :'(  And the personal trauma of that day in the dry landscape filled with glaring light must have been hidden so deep down that only Jack can make Ennis bring it forth. I suppose it’s a safe bet that Ennis never tells that tale to anyone else ever, nor lets anyone see how deeply it affects him - and that he never talked with his brother about it either.


That big heavy hand at the boy's neck must have made Ennis feel all the more helpless and powerless to do and be anything else than his father wanted. I can imagine him still feeling the weight of that hand more than once in his dealings with Jack.


The death of Ennis's father takes on a new meaning for the audience after the flashback scene - his death surely served to cement his opinions in Ennis's mind. It made it impossible for Ennis to ever rebel against him, meet him on equal footing, have it out with him, oppose him and move on. Perhaps he would never have managed to do so, perhaps he’d never have wanted to, but his father dying forever removed the choice, that possibility. Now his father’s memory is immutably fixed in time with his opinion of queers, and nothing Ennis can say or do will be able to change that. And anyway………. you’re not supposed to “speak ill of the dead”.


I wonder if perhaps it was a blessing in disguise that Ennis only had daughters and no son. I’m not alt all sure that he’d have managed raising a son with the affection and sensitivity and open love he showed towards his daughters – his inherited ideas of what a boy should be and how a boy should be raised might have made for a difficult relationship for both father and son.


Ennis has something in common with his father in relation to all this: They both go to great lengths to ensure that some specific event doesn’t happen – only to have it happen anyway, and with a cruel vengeance. Ennis’s father possibly goes as far as killing a person to ensure that his sons grow up "right" and straight and with the proper opinion of queers – but his younger son turns out to be queer nevertheless, and with a terrible crushing load of mental baggage to go with it. And Ennis in his turn tries to avoid the fate of gay bashing for himself and for Jack through keeping the two of them apart all those years, but the gay bashing (in Ennis’s mind) happens anyway, the only difference being all the happiness he denied them in the period inbetween.

Fathers and sons, “dysfunctional” families, meeting a prophesied fate through trying to avoid that very fate, psychological themes related to sexuality; – I bet Oedipus and any number of other Greek tragedy characters would have welcomed Ennis with open arms.

Ennis even manages to add a further layer to the tragic dimension with the ambiguity in the story – what if Jack *wasn’t* the victim of a gay bashing, what if his death was only a freak accident? Ennis kept them apart for all those years ostensibly to keep them alive….. and then death strikes blindly anyway, unrelated to anything else in the story. If that isn’t the greatest irony, and tragedy, of all…… I’m sure Ennis’s dad would have thought it absolutely hilarious.

-------

(I’m really sorry this turned out so long. I was thinking of perhaps creating a separate thread on this, but I suppose the topic of parents and children, esp. fathers and sons in BBM must have been debated to exhaustion and beyond a long time ago, before I ever came to this board.)

Mikaela:

--- Quote from: nakymaton on June 05, 2006, 11:10:27 pm ---I think she had an insight based on the subtitles on the version of the movie that played in her country. We had a conversation like this before, but, ummmm, I can't remember what she said.
--- End quote ---

The subtitles said "What happened was a one-time event" - with the unambiguous implication that Ennis did not intend continuing the relationship beyond the one night. But in this, the translator had no more and no less knowledge than any of us, I suppose. The line is open to interpretation whether there's a script available or not. And the way the same line's placed in the short story, and in the corresponding published translation, gives no lead, as Jack doesn't say it there until they've been having sex for some time.

I must admit that having gone back and forth on it, I finally arrived at Latjoreme's view as mine some while back:
--- Quote ---He does intend to continue the thing for now, though. He knows how he feels about Jack and realizes that this is a big chance for him (Ennis) to be 19 and do what he wants. But he's also cognizant of his upcoming marriage, and believes that once they descend back into society that's all over, "this thing" can't work.
--- End quote ---

That seems to go with the time Ennis gives himself all that day thinking through what has happened and what it means, the gravity of his portrayal in those scenes before and as he sits down next to Jack, and the fact that he speaks in present tense. I would have expected some sort of violent outburst and physical expression of frustration directed at Jack if Ennis had meant for it to be over there.

Still doesn't mean it's easy for him to actually go through with, though. His handwringing at the fire - the very picture of conflicting emotions. Everything he desires and craves only a few steps away, but still at war with everything he knows "to be right".   

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