Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
Why was the Dozy Embrace so sad?
Phillip Dampier:
--- Quote from: southendmd on April 05, 2007, 05:48:25 pm ---Thanks, Phillip. I have a question: I can make out Ennis humming "Cowboy's Lament/Street of Laredo" just before he comes on the bear. I assumed that was what was being credited. Did you hear Ennis humming the same in the dozy embrace? I could never make it out, especially with the swelling soundtrack.
BTW, I learned "Streets of Laredo" in Catholic school in Massachusetts! They didn't change it to the "Streets of Lowell". LOL
Paul
--- End quote ---
Yes, that is what he's humming before the bear scene. My apologies that I wasn't more clear about that - the wrong revision got posted - I was working on this in a different editor. I have to fix an issue with the final revision and then it will be back in more clarity!
moremojo:
I need some clarification on the song element. It was my understanding that the tune Ennis is humming early on in the film, when he's bringing back the victuals picked up from the Basque at the bridge, and right before he encounters the bear, is "The Cowboy's Lament", which is indeed cited in the film's closing credits. So I gather that the tune/lullaby that Ennis briefly hums to Jack in the dozy embrace is also "The Cowboy's Lament" (aka "The Streets of Laredo", aka "My Home's in Montana")?
By the way, I never could really hear the humming in the earlier sequence in my theatrical viewings, and couldn't really discern any distinctive tune in the dozy embrace, either. It was only with my exposure to the DVD that I finally picked up on the earlier humming, though I still can't really pick out the tune, either here or in the dozy embrace.
southendmd:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on April 05, 2007, 05:50:51 pm ---What? You grew up in Lowell?? That is Jack Kerouac's hometown!! Wow!!
--- End quote ---
No, Lee, just riffing on the Laredo/Larkin change.
But, I believe Louise did!
Phillip Dampier:
This is not my day. After putting up the wrong revision of my message, the database decided to corrupt the whole thing and poof --- away it went. So my apologies to folks, because unless someone happens to have saved a copy of it, I am going to have to rewrite it from scratch. Argh!!!! One of the annoying things about this software is that once you modify a message, what you wrote before is gone. I would have been safer deleting it, because that would have stuck around until the forum software did its compression routine.
I'm like the angry bear in the creek right now. Grrrrr.....
Cameron:
--- Quote from: ineedcrayons on April 04, 2007, 04:25:50 pm ---The dozy embrace is mirrored in the lake scene, when Ennis is again driving away (apparently without looking back), and Jack is again gazing after him. Again, there is snow: snow on the mountains, snow in Jack's prediction the night before and implicitly in his complaints about the cold. Again, Ennis fully expects to see Jack "in the morning" -- that is, in November, the next time they're scheduled to get together. But this time he doesn't. After that, things will never be the same again.
To me, that elevates the phrase "see you in the morning" to a higher level of meaning. See you in the next life? See you someday in a world where homophobia won't keep us apart? I'm not saying it's meant to be literal. But it resonates so much more to think of if as the last words they exchange before not seeing each other again.
--- End quote ---
I was thinking about this, and I watched it again several times, and I now totally agree. I believe that "I gotta go" and "see you in the morning" can totally be taken as not just literal statements, but also I guess as representations of their whole lives.
The DE is one of the very few moments when Ennis is at peace. I think that "I gotta go" means not just that he has to leave Jack to go to the sheep, but that he has to leave this world with Jack where he is at peace, because of all the pressures that he has put on himself and that society has put on him. I think Ennis's/Heaths expression is remarkable, it's not happiness really, it seems to be almost a recognition that being with Jack like that was the only time since being with his Momma that he is complete and whole in a way. But he had to leave because he didn't have the strength to live in that world of peace and comfort with Jack and go against his internal demons and societies pressures.
I also agree that "see you in the morning'' could have been a prophecy, that he will see Jack in the next life, or whenever the time came when Ennis would be able to live the life that he needed to with Jack, and all the pressures that have stopped him previously don't exist anymore.
I hope this makes sense at all.
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