Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
what possessed Jack to take that shirt in the first place?
starboardlight:
--- Quote from: nakymaton on June 05, 2006, 12:53:58 pm ---That's a really good point, Nipith. I hadn't thought of that. And yeah, JakeTwist, you're right, Jack would have had to keep his mother from washing both shirts. (I kind of imagine her letting Jack have his privacy and not asking too many questions -- she just strikes me as someone who can understand what's going on without having it spelled out to her. But since Jack only had two shirts on the mountain as well, she must have known that only one of them got washed when he got home. It wasn't like Jack came home with a huge bag of laundry or anything. But... hmmm. I don't know about Jack explaining much about Ennis. He's more open than Ennis is - at the very least, he's able to say "Brokeback Mountain" to other people - but I don't see him being that open. Even with his parents. I mean, Jack's a pretty good liar, and I assume he learned how to lie as a child. And Jack seems to lie almost instinctively at times. He probably learned to do that to deal with his father, but... hmmm. It seems like it would be hard for Jack to be open with his mother and lie to his father all the time in that little house together, if that makes any sense at all.)
Again, I just don't see Jack being that open about the whole experience. Certainly not with his father. I imagine that Jack lied about the reason for the bruise. And I imagine Jack bringing up Ennis almost defiantly, while arguing with his father. But that's really just speculation. I'm not going on anything stronger than gut feelings and imagination here.
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well, Jack spoke openly about bring Ennis up to their ranch to live and work the ranch. I can't imagine that Jack doesn't understand how honest that is. He surely knows that the implication is that he and Ennis are lovers. His daddy and mama seem to understand it well enough.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: starboardlight on June 05, 2006, 01:12:20 pm ---well, Jack spoke openly about bring Ennis up to their ranch to live and work the ranch. I can't imagine that Jack doesn't understand how honest that is. He surely knows that the implication is that he and Ennis are lovers. His daddy and mama seem to understand it well enough.
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Yeah, I think that's all he'd have to say and they'd both get it. I can't imagine him being much more explicit than that, even with his nice mom.
Shakesthecoffecan:
Yes, Yes, Jack's motivation, ah what would life be with out dyslexia...
I think that Jack took that shirt because Ennis had just punched him and he thought "that's it" like it was all over, he wanted to keep something of his, hid it inside his own shirt, in his own closet, and at the end of the winter of '63-'64, he left them hanging there and headed out for Signal again, hoping Ennis Del Mar had 'been around".
Last night I came across a cassette tape scrawled on it "Pink Industry" I remember the guy, a college kid, that left it in my apartment in 1986. I gave it a kiss and put it back on the shelf.
moremojo:
--- Quote from: nakymaton on May 28, 2006, 11:40:53 am ---
There's something kind of sad and poignant about just taking the shirt rather than asking for it (or offering a shirt in exchange). I'm not sure I understand quite why I feel that way.
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I agree. The fact that Jack acquires Ennis's shirt through an act of stealing adds a level of complex and troubled beauty to the story. It's difficult to articulate how and why this film is so powerful--there's something mysterious about it. That may be one reason we keep going back to it, over and over again, in physical experience and in memory.
Scott
Brown Eyes:
--- Quote from: moremojo on June 05, 2006, 05:10:09 pm ---I agree. The fact that Jack acquires Ennis's shirt through an act of stealing adds a level of complex and troubled beauty to the story. It's difficult to articulate how and why this film is so powerful--there's something mysterious about it. That may be one reason we keep going back to it, over and over again, in physical experience and in memory.
Scott
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I agree too. I think at least it has the status of a surprise for Ennis. If Jack had asked for the shirst explicitly, the end of the movie wouldn't have had the feeling of a revelation. Ennis had no idea that Jack kept such a powerful memento for so long. This surprise in Jack's closet needs to hit Ennis like a ton of bricks for the symbol to have as much power as it clearly does.
This is reminding me of that wonderful old review of BBB by David Mendelsohn in the New York Review of Books. Early on, I thought this was one of the best pieces of writing I'd seen about the movie/ story. Honestly, these days I think a lot of the analysis that goes on here at BetterMost is at least equal to this... if not better at times.
--- Quote ---The climax of these visual contrasts is also the emotional climax of the film, which takes place in two consecutive scenes, both of which prominently feature closets—literal closets. In the first, a grief-stricken Ennis, now in his late thirties, visits Jack's childhood home, where in the tiny closet of Jack's almost bare room he discovers two shirts—his and Jack's, the clothes they'd worn during their summer on Brokeback Mountain—one of which Jack has sentimentally encased in the other. (At the end of that summer, Ennis had thought he'd lost the shirt; only now do we realize that Jack had stolen it for this purpose.) The image —which is taken directly from Proulx's story—of the two shirts hidden in the closet, preserved in an embrace which the men who wore them could never fully enjoy, stands as the poignant visual symbol of the story's tragedy. Made aware too late of how greatly he was loved, of the extent of his loss, Ennis stands in the tiny windowless space, caressing the shirts and weeping wordlessly.
In the scene that follows, another misplaced piece of clothing leads to a similar scene of tragic realization. Now middle-aged and living alone in a battered, sparsely furnished trailer (a setting with which Proulx's story begins, the tale itself unfolding as a long flashback), Ennis receives a visit from his grown daughter, who announces that she's engaged to be married. "Does he love you?" the blighted father protectively demands, as if realizing too late that this is all that matters. After the girl leaves, Ennis realizes she's left her sweater behind, and when he opens his little closet door to store it there, we see that he's hung the two shirts from their first summer, one still wearing the other, on the inside of the closet door, below a tattered postcard of Brokeback Mountain. Just as we see this, the camera pulls back to allow us a slightly wider view, which reveals a little window next to the closet, a rectangular frame that affords a glimpse of a field of yellow flowers and the mountains and sky. The juxtaposition of the two spaces—the cramped and airless closet, the window with its unlimited vistas beyond—efficiently but wrenchingly suggests the man's tragedy: the life he has lived, the life that might have been. His eyes filling with tears, Ennis looks at his closet and says, "Jack, I swear..."; but he never completes his sentence, as he never completed his life.
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I think one of the things that Mendelsohn gets wrong is the idea that Ennis only now understands that Jack loved him. It's a beautiful sentence though. I'm quite sure that Ennis knew this all along... I think it was only a matter of articulating the situation clearly. This visual symbol was enough to wake Ennis up to the reality of their whole 20 year long relationship. And, I'm sure the shirts really did make Ennis aware of the extent of his loss. I keep coming back to the tragedy of the lost time. Ennis and Jack could have spent so, so much more time together over the 20 years that they did have if they had lived together or even lived closer.
:'(
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