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

The Love of Two Shirts

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moviegoer:
I hunted down that poem, OldeSoul!  WOW!  That is one of the most beautiful pieces I've read in a long, long time!!  So, so perfect for this movie!  Encompass that with everything else BBM had to offer?  I'm just going to say it.  Ang Lee is a genius!!!   ;D

The shirts just about cap the movie for me.  A final brushstroke of a masterpiece that just speaks so many things in such an inanimate object.  I mean, I can't tell you the number of items I've "stolen" from an ex just so that I could keep their memory alive with me.   ;D  So, I can easily see Jack & Ennis' motives here.  But I probably shouldn't hang myself up on the shirts though; I do get that lump in my throat when I think about them, which sends me over the edge to weepy town...    Yeesh.  Is there a support group for romantic suckers like us?   ;D

alec716:

--- Quote from: moviegoer on June 22, 2006, 10:13:24 pm ---I hope I'm not the only person who can't seem to shake the impact these 2 wayward lives had on each other, and those around them!? 
--- End quote ---

44,488 posts and counting should help convince you that you are not the only one, by a long shot!   ;)   glad to know you, moviegoer!

alec716:

--- Quote from: moviegoer on June 22, 2006, 10:25:16 pm ---Is there a support group for romantic suckers like us?   ;D

--- End quote ---

um, yeah, it's called BetterMost.net !  Welcome to the family.

jpwagoneer1964:

--- Quote from: moviegoer on June 22, 2006, 08:16:18 pm ---
 

I've heard people mention that when Ennis finds both shirts, he says “I love you”. I’ve replayed the scene a few times but haven’t been able to hear it. But, it really doesn’t matter. You KNOW he loved Jack, and that Jack loved Ennis. You see it in what they experienced; how they experienced it; the look in & on each other’s faces. And it's not just the sex, but in all of the facets of their lives together and/or apart. The fact that Jack kept both shirts proves how much Ennis meant to Jack. How much Jack loved Ennis. It was a reminder for Jack of a time when everything was so less complicated for both of them. And unlike Jack, up until this point there was nothing that Ennis had in his possession that showed his love for Jack. Until the very last scene.

And thus the point of my posting. When Ennis finds the two shirts, his checkered shirt is underneath Jack’s blue shirt; the sleeves of Ennis’ shirt actually inside the sleeves of Jack’s shirt. If you believe that this was Jack’s doing and not Jack’s mother (if she happened to come across the shirts and thought they were both Jack’s given the blood was in the same spot) then it was almost a way of Jack “covering”, “holding”, or better yet “embracing” Ennis, almost saying ‘I love you’.

At least, that’s how I read it as

--- End quote ---
In the closet scene Ennis does say "I love you". It is just a wisper and can be seen more the heard just before the scene is cut to the kitchen. The shirts cover most of his mouth but you can see it as well.

whiteoutofthemoon:
great thoughts, moviegoer!     The first time I saw the movie, I knew that the shirt scene was coming, simply because it was in the trailer, and you knew something sad and tragic was around that situation.  So at first I thought it was rather predictable.    But what came as a devastating surprise was Ennis finding his own shirt inside Jack's shirt.....   I thought I was good at predicting movie outcomes, but that one blew me away!     It was like " that's his shirt!!".....  and of course you think back to the departure scene when he mentions incidentally that he lost his shirt on the mountain....   and it's like..."wow!".   And then you get the whole significance of it, that somehow Jack had a suspicion that he would have to say goodbye when they came down from the mountain, and, in an act of preparation, if not desperation,  decided to hide away Ennis' shirt as the only momento he would have of that summer.   No pictures, no letters, nothing else from that summer, except that shirt.   Another poignant reminder also that Ennis came to the mountain with very little of his own personal possessions in that little bag, so there wasn't really much for Jack to sneak away that belonged to Ennis to begin with.

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