Maybe this thread has lain dormant for too long, so no one will much care about this post, but I'm gonna do it anyway.
I have had (and still have) a different take on marriage than many people. It's a little old fashioned, but it's just how I feel.
I fault internal and external cultural, perhaps even rural homophobia for the fact that Ennis and Jack couldn't get together and be together for life immediately after BBM.
I fault Jack and Ennis, both in story and film, for not sticking to their marriage vows four years later.
There. I said it. Bring on the flack. But before you do, let me do some 'splaining.
If gay marriage were allowed in this country, I would put it in the same category as I put straight marriage right now, and expect the same thing out of the participants. In my ideal world, you speak your vows, and you STAY WITH THE PERSON YOU VOW TO.
I understand that doesn't always work. OK, but I have a second position. If you and your spouse/partner have kids together, YOU STAY WITH YOUR PARTNER/SPOUSE UNTIL THE KIDS LEAVE THE HOUSE (or at least are old enough to leave the house).
I had this up on IMDB last winter and got a LOT of flack over it, basically with folks saying that it would have been so bad if their parents had stayed together, etc. So, I acknowledge this is my personal preference. But I don't believe all the social research shoots me down completely.
So if the characters had acted the way I would want them to act, the way I would want to act myself, they would have waited until (was Bobby the youngest of the three children total?) the youngest was 18, then divorced their wives, then ranched up together - or had their time in the woods.
Just lived through keeping a good friend from killing himself when his wife left with his best friend. Part of the problem was the way she did it - got together sexually with the guy and then told her husband. I think I understand that she did it that way so she could piss my friend off enough to make him give her up, but I still think it was very, very wrong.
I just met with a client who has three kids. Her husband left for another man AFTER their youngest turned 18. They had decided this was best and followed through. They are pretty good friends still (enough so he's to be in charge of her financial decision-making if something happens to her).
I understand this was 21st century California, not 1967 Wyoming. But like Ennis says, he was "Stuck in his own loop." So I don't really fault him for trying to stick with the family once he was committed. Of course, he did a bad job of it.
Did they get what they deserved? Not as humans in love, no. But they both should either have NOT married, or stuck it out at least until the kids were gone.
I saw above in this thread many comparisons to Romeo & Juliet; problem - they didn't have a home together they were raising kids in. Never got the chance, you say? Well, exactly - neither did Jack and Ennis. Marriage, and it's commitments, exists for good reasons outside of mere homophobia. In other words, marriage does not exist just to diss gays. Thus, we need gay marriage or it's equivalent sanctioned by the state. Not that such a sanction would have helped in Ennis's situation in any event.
To me, that's a big message of this film.
