I can't resist. I feel that BetterMost needs and deserves its very own version of a "Jack and the Wind" thread (especially since this topic has been sneaking into other threads a lot lately). I would love to respark more discussion about this. Those of you who know me, know how much I love this topic.
One of the most beautiful (and to me one of the most romantic) metaphors that has come out of discussions of symbolic aspects of BBM is the idea that Jack comes to be represented by the wind or, that his nature symbol is the wind/ air. This parallels Ennis's nature symbol which many see as earth (or sometimes fire)- topics for another thread perhaps. Thinking about these symbols seems particularly important in relation to the film's official tag line, "love is a force of nature."
The clearest moment in the film that nearly spells out the idea that Jack= Wind is in Aguirre's trailer when Jack returns to see if Aguirre has a third summer of work for him (and is really there to see if Ennis has been around). As Jack steps into the trailer, the vent above Aguirre's desk starts to spin (it had been still up to the moment Jack enters) and Aguirre says "well, look what the wind blew in". Electic fans and vents also seem to be evocative of Jack and the wind, especially in Ennis's trailer at the end.
There are all sorts of moments throughout the film where Jack seems to be evoked by the visual or audio presence of the wind. The wind often seems to be brought in as an element in the film to signify that Ennis is thinking about Jack.
Here are two of the most important aspects of the wind to me.
The first moment is directly following the first tent scene. As Ennis mounts his horse and rides away, we see Jack watch him disappear into the distance. Just at this moment the wind kicks up rather dramatically. It's as if the wind is coming from Jack or Jack's gaze and follows Ennis up the mountain. The wind blows strongly against Ennis and his horse as if Jack is tormenting him or overwhelming him. We know that Ennis is consumed by thinking about Jack and what the two of them have done. It's at this moment that Jack takes on slightly, oh so subtle, magical quality. And this makes sense, Jack is the *beloved* to the protagonist Ennis in this story. So Jack through Ennis's eyes would be seen as this particularly special figure who has a lot of power over him. Jack from this point on haunts Ennis's thoughts (especially in his daily life in Riverton, through the wind and through the constant presence of men with black hats).
The second most moving aspect of the wind idea, for me, comes following Jack's death. The symbol of the wind allows Jack to persist as an extremely subtle ghostly presence after he dies. The wind rustling in the grass at the very end seems to me to be Jack acknowledging Ennis's "I swear..." To me the best example of the air symbol is in the Lightning Flat scene when Ennis is in Jack's bedroom. It's only after Ennis opens the window to allow the air into the stagnant room that he notices the closet. There is no real noticeable wind here (the curtains don't flutter for example). But, the air seems to signify that Jack has been given entry into the scene. When Ennis is in the closet and discovers the two shirts, it's slightly spooky to notice that the sleeves of the coats in the closet continue to sway after Ennis had fondled them (as if Ennis is being proded by the motion of Jack's old clothes to find those coupled shirts).
It's interesting that the wind idea seems much more subtle in the film than in the book. Proulx hits the reader over the head with it. From the first paragraph:
"Ennis Del Mar wakes before five, wind rocking the trailer, hissing in around the aluminum door and window frames. The shirts hanging on a nail shudder slightly in the draft.... He... pulls on his shirt and jeans, his worn boots, stamping the heels against the floor to get them full on. The wind booms down the curved length of the trailer and under it's roaring passage he can hear the scratching of fine gravel and sand. It could be bad on the highway with the horse trailer. He has to be packed and away from the place that morning. Again the ranch is on the market... He might have to stay with his married daughter until he picks up another job, yet he is suffused with a sense of pleasure because Jack Twist was in his dream... [He] lets a panel of the dream slide forward. If he does not focus his attention on it, it might stoke the day, rewarm that old, cold time on the mountain when they owned the world and nothing seemed wrong. The wind strkies the trailer like a load of dirt coming off a dump truck, eases, dies, leaves a temporary silence."
