I read the story several years before I saw the movie and thought it was excellent as literature. The imagery, the use of language, the amazing plot -- no one had ever written anything like it before ...
But after reading and appreciating it, I moved on. I was not floored by the story. I did not seek an internet message board to discuss it.
The movie is what really made an emotional impact on me. Why? Well, for one thing, although the movie is spare and understated, it is not as zealously unsentimental as the story. The movie doesn't prod emotions, but it doesn't skitter from them, either. In my mind, Annie Proulx did everything she could to avoid being saccharine, and although in general I like that tendency and think it adds to the story's power, her spareness it was so extreme as to ultimately be, for me, off-putting. Some of the elements used to undercut otherwise touching moments -- "he missed Ennis bad enough sometimes to make him whip babies," the flashback of Jack's dad peeing on him -- were just a bit too ascetic.
Also, to me the movie characters had more depth. We've talked about how Movie Ennis, particularly, is different from Story Ennis. Well, I understand Movie Ennis better, and his emotional turmoil seems more complex and tragic to me. Story Ennis is depicted as declining Jack's "sweet life" offer primarily out of a pragmatic fear of violence; Movie Ennis, it is clear, rejects Jack's invitation much more because of internal conflicts. I also can see the distinctions more clearly between Movie Ennis and Movie Jack than I do between Story Ennis and Story Jack. In the first, they are almost opposites. In the second, they are more similar, just with kind of different opinions. Ultimately, the movie characters had more impact on me.
And finally -- this might seem silly, but -- the dialect in the story was a bit of a turn-off, for me. It was so extreme as to make the characters seem kind of cartoony. I have lived in the West for short periods, but I haven't spent enough time there to know if there are people who really talk like that -- and, if so, my bad. But the characters in the movie talked more like people I'm familiar with, and I could relate to them better because of it.