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

A Ninth Viewing Observation

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Brown Eyes:
About Ennis's regrets... again this is something I've said a lot on various threads, but I'll repeat it.  Given that he believes that Jack was murdered, I think the main core of his regret is realizing that living apart did not save Jack from the fate Ennis worried about for 20 years.  The regret, I think is over the huge amount of lost time with Jack.  I'm like Katherine in believing that Ennis knew he loved Jack before Jack died and that Jack love Ennis and knew it too.  They did not articulate this to each other, but I think they both knew this.  I always feel that one of the main tragedies in the movie (aside from obvious things like Jack dying) is the lost time.  "Never enough time" really stings for me when I think about the story.  Ennis's rules about living apart did not save Jack from homophobic violence (at least according to Ennis's belief about how he died), did not save Ennis from his huge grief and did not even really keep their relationship a secret (since there's quite a list of characters that do know about their relationship).  I think by the end Ennis really regrets not giving the living together idea a try.  I think another part of Ennis's regret is not saying "I love you" out loud to Jack.  This of course is how I see the "I swear..." moment.

welliwont:

--- Quote from: latjoreme on August 05, 2006, 01:32:47 am ---Cassie leaves a bunch of notes, trying to get ahold of him and wondering what had happened to their relationship. Ennis meanwhile has decided on his own to break up with her, but instead of telling her he just cruelly ignores the notes.

--- End quote ---

Well I swore I wasn't gonna get into this again, but oh well, here goes, this thread is touching on things that I have been mulling over this week...

I don't know why so many people love Ennis, I really don't.  I know I am not gonna win any friends here, but here goes:  I am one of the ones who is down on Ennis.  Even more so now....  Ennis was selfish with most of the people in his life, not just with Jack.

#1)  Ennis is selfish with Jack, Ennis sets the tone and the frequency of their time together, hell, at the twenty year mark he is even cutting back on it!  Does he even put Jack's feelings into the equation?   If he is not blind and stupid he can see how much Jack hurts when they part, does he not care about how he's hurting Jack?  Instead he waits until the last possible moment to drop the bombshell, that Jack is now going to have to wait twice as long to see Ennis again.  I don't buy Ennis' excuse of having to work, if he is not stupid and a complete idiot he is getting older and should be getting wiser, he should have the smarts to figure out how to make the time in August.  Instead he says he can't, he has to work.  bs

#2)  the way he broke up with Cassie.  The timeline of the movie clearly shows that Cassie started seeing Ennis in 1978, and Ennis ended it with her in 1983.  What kind of a coldhearted bastard ends a five-year relationship by simply ceasing to show up or call?  Not one little word about it did Ennis say to Cassie.  How unspeakably cruel.  I can't find any excuse for that kind of cruelty, no matter how introverted and tortured Ennis may have been.

#3)  already been discussed above, he wasn't seeing his children all that much, post divorce, once a month?  And they live in the same rural community?  What was keeping him from seeing them once or twice a week?  It sure did not look like he had that busy a social life, wtf was keeping him away?

Refusing the sweet life with Jack.  He refused it when the girls were babies, he refused it after the divorce, and when his kids were almost grown, he seems not one whit closer to going to Jack than he ever was, in fact he is pulling back.   Here he has someone who is offering him love, and he is pushing it away.  Breaking Jack's heart to boot.  Here was poor Jack, still holding out hope, and Ennis screwing it all up.  Did he never ever hear the old saying "you only live once"?  How he could choose a lonely desolate life living in that shitty trailer over being with someone who loves him with all their heart?  Sounds like a no-brainer to me, sounds like Ennis is a masochist or an idiot.

A lot of people have nothing but sympathy for Ennis, poor tortured Ennis, and I am not lessening the horror of Ennis seeing at age 9 the tortured mutilated corpse of Earl, but Ennis is letting that horror rule and ruin his whole life!  Yes it was horrible, unspeakable, criminal.  It also is far removed (timewise) and unrelated to Ennis' present life, present circumstance.  It has nothing to do with the place he lives now, nothing to do with any of the important people in Ennis's life now.  Thirty-one years ago a crime was committed.  Ok.  Move on already!

Finally, one more paragraph on this:  Jack loved Ennis and would not stop loving Ennis, hell after the big fight, the minute Ennis has his breakdown what is Jack doing?  He moves to Ennis right away, comforting him, "shh It's alright, it's alright", always giving love to Ennis.  What does Ennis give to Jack?  Heartache and disappointment.  What did Ennis ever really *do* *for* Jack in those past 16 years besides just show up a couple-three times a year?

I don't know why so many people love Ennis, I really don't.  The thing is, for some strange reason most of the people I have made acquaintance with have been Heathens!  So I really am doing myself a disservice by posting this!  Oh well....

Jane

jpwagoneer1964:

--- Quote from: JakeTwist on August 06, 2006, 01:10:30 am ---Well I swore I wasn't gonna get into this again, but oh well, here goes, this thread is touching on things that I have been mulling over this week...

 
Refusing the sweet life with Jack.  He refused it when the girls were babies, he refused it after the divorce, 


--- End quote ---
It would have been the right thing for Ennis or anyone to leave his young family for another? NOT!!!!!!!THAT is selfish!!!!

serious crayons:
Well, there you go. That's exactly what I mean. Jane, I don't think you're at all alone in some of these thoughts. In my experience there are a number of people who would agree on many of these things.

Myself, I respectfully disagree with almost everything you say, but I've already explained that. Everyone is entitled to his/her own opinion. But there is one point I do feel compelled to dispute.


--- Quote from: JakeTwist on August 06, 2006, 01:10:30 am --- I am not lessening the horror of Ennis seeing at age 9 the tortured mutilated corpse of Earl, but Ennis is letting that horror rule and ruin his whole life!  Yes it was horrible, unspeakable, criminal.  It also is far removed (timewise) and unrelated to Ennis' present life, present circumstance.  It has nothing to do with the place he lives now, nothing to do with any of the important people in Ennis's life now.  Thirty-one years ago a crime was committed.  Ok.  Move on already!
--- End quote ---

I think you have to keep in mind is that the Earl incident is not something that Ennis experienced for five minutes, three decades ago.

He was nine. He was gay. Which he probably already sensed, at some level. So for the next however many years until his dad died, he lived in the same house with a parent whom he may have loved and was taught to respect and yet whom he presumed fully capable of torturing someone to death for being the same way that he, Ennis, knew himself to be. His dad was implicitly saying, "This is what will happen to you, boy, if you ever have sex with a man." And Ennis knew his dad wasn't the only one who felt that way. In fact, gradually he came to believe everyone felt that way. Yet, he also knew he was attracted to men. So he learned to repress and hide it. Years of repression and hiding in childhood and adolescence aren't, IMO, something from which you "move on, already," all that easily.

Then his dad died. As Mikaela has pointed out, if Ennis would have ever have been able to reject those teachings and realize his dad was full of shit, his death made it that much harder-- you're supposed to grant even MORE respect for the dead.

Unrelated to Ennis' present life and circumstance? Nothing to do with the place he lives now? Nothing to do with the important people in his life now? Probably just about everyone Ennis has ever met, with the exception of Jack, more or less agreed with his dad, at least in the disapproval if not the outright murdering. As we were just discussing on another thread, even the radio announcer is telling a homophobic joke as Ennis is packing to go on a fishing trip with Jack.

Personally, I had a fairly normal childhood and adolescence. So I can't know firsthand what it would be like to live in terror as a child in my own house, fearing my own parent, or to try to overcome that later, or to be in love with someone even though I'd been taught that kind of love is so bad it deserves to be punished with a hideous death. I don't have any major demographic characteristic that would elicit vehement disapproval from pretty much everyone around me. So I can't say exactly what that would be like for Ennis.

But I think I can pretty safely say it wouldn't be particularly easy to "move on, already."

It's funny. Last night I had this same discussion with another Jackophile, except in that case she was arguing that Ennis could never overcome his homophobia because it was too deeply ingrained from his childhood, and I was arguing that Ennis should be able to unlearn his childhood teachings. I wasn't saying, "move on, already." But I was saying that, given the experiences he'd had in later life, he could eventually learn to transcend it.

Now I'm wondering if I didn't make it sound too easy, myself ...

welliwont:

--- Quote from: latjoreme on August 06, 2006, 02:41:48 am ---I think you have to keep in mind is that the Earl incident is not something that Ennis experienced for five minutes, three decades ago.

He was nine. He was gay. Which he probably already sensed, at some level. So for the next however many years until his dad died, he lived in the same house with a parent whom he may have loved and was taught to respect and yet whom he presumed fully capable of torturing someone to death for being the same way that he, Ennis, knew himself to be. His dad was implicitly saying, "This is what will happen to you, boy, if you ever have sex with a man." And Ennis knew his dad wasn't the only one who felt that way. In fact, gradually he came to believe everyone felt that way. Yet, he also knew he was attracted to men. So he learned to repress and hide it. Years of repression and hiding in childhood and adolescence aren't, IMO, something from which you "move on, already," all that easily.

Then his dad died. As Mikaela has pointed out, if Ennis would have ever have been able to reject those teachings and realize his dad was full of shit, his death made it that much harder-- you're supposed to grant even MORE respect for the dead.

--- End quote ---

OK, you are way more eloquent than I, but I will respond anyway.  Everything you said is true.  but just because his father believed and tried to make Ennis believe that homosexuality is BAD, etc etc. and yes his father probably did have a big influence on Ennis for the first 12 or 14 years of his life, the fact is, his father is long gone now.  I don't believe that the misguided hateful beliefs of the father are necessarily hopelessly branded into the mind and soul of the son, even less so if the father disappears at such a early stage of his life.

Ok, Ennis knew what his father believed.  But just because you know that a parent has this or that strong belief, does it become your strong value?  no, not necessarily.  Kids reject their parents' values all the time.  So Ennis finds himself doing and enjoying that very thing that his dead father hated so much, having sex with a man!  Good grief, Ennis *does* have pleasure when he is with Jack, he goes to Jack with a smile on his face, he lives for his time with Jack, so why is it so difficult for him to say to himself, "yeah my old man, he was a sumbitch, dead for 20 years now, he sure didn't care for queers, but shee-yt this here is what I like, this man is the one I wanna be with, and be naked with, shee-yt, I guess my old man was wrong!"

Anyway, I can't think of a better way to explain this, except to say that many people have experienced horrific tragediies in their lives equal to and greater than what Ennis did, and they do not let themselves be paralyzed with fear the way Ennis does.

The reason I am saying it has nothing to do with Ennis' present surroundings, is, Earl's murder is the only queer murder that we are told about, as being something that Ennis has heard about from around Wyoming.  Hell, what are the odds anyway, of it happening again?  Are the odds so stong that it makes sense to live like Ennis did, not liive the one life you have to the fullest?

Jane

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