I don't kniow if Jack was picked up one night by a sailor, or spent a month with a man cremating sheep (as in my story), or had a friend at home, but he sure ain't no virgin. There are about 50 signs before the first tent scene that he is after Ennis...if I have to enumerate them, I will.
To compare Jack's initial action in the first tent scene with Ennis's FIVE MINUTES LATER is ridiculous. All this time, Jack has been workng very hard.
Not only is Ennis a virgin, he has no sense of sex. This is of course pretty rare for a 19-year-old boy. (It may have to do with what his father did to him when he was 9, probably so, since he seems perefectly healthy sesually later; probably his shyness is part of the same package.) Jack realiazes this, and that making Ennis feel like his friend isn't going to move Ennis into sexuality. Ennis could spend the whole summer sitting around yakking with jack, perfectly happy. It isn't an accident that Ennis is three times as drunk as Jack the night of the first tent scene. Something has to be done.
Jack's work is never doine,..until he dies. That finally does it...yeah, great timing.
Well, that's my take.
I respect your opinion, but I completely disagree with everything you have said.
In the short story ....
"each glad to have a companion where none had been expected." ... I agree with Jeff_Wrangler's response:
I've kind of explained that line to myself as meaning that they were both pleased to be paired up with another guy of the same age who turned out to be fun to hang out with, a real, well, companion--I'm thinking in particular of Annie's description of the night Ennis simply had so much fun hanging around the fire with Jack, talking and drinking, that he thought he could paw the white out of the moon. Maybe the year before Jack had been paired with some cranky old Basque who had nothing in common with an 18-year-old ranch kid, so even before he fell in love with Ennis, he could have been mighty happy to be working with a guy his own age, from a similar background.
I don't think either one of them saw themselves as gay (while up on BBM). In an interview with Jake Gyllenhaal, he says: (I am the queen of quotes ... it is one of my many faux pas ... so bear with me):
"And this movie was like, it has no bounds. Like, these aren't, in my belief, these aren't two, like gay guys. These are two people who fall in love. And, you know, from the environment that they're in, which is incredibly lonely, and, you know, they find each other."http://www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/txt/s1459509.htmIn another interview:
... Your character is quite gregarious, especially compared to Heath's character, Ennis."Yeah. I think there's a part of him that wants to progress and wants to change and wants things to move forward, and is constantly kind of pushing Ennis to come out of his shell. But it's that dance between the two of them that I think makes the two of them fall in love."http://movies.radiofree.com/interviews/brokebac_jake_gyllenhaal.shtmlAs for Ennis having no sense of sex, I heartedly disagree. Ennis knew what he was doing FNIT. The short story says that "no manual was needed." Yes, Ennis was a virgin, Jack was not. However, IMO, it
was both Ennis' and Jack's first time with a man. I think that if they
both would have been sober this would have never happened. Both of their inhabitions were down.
Lastly, (I swear ....
) here is part of an interview from Heath that talks about the FNIT et.al.:
Question: How did you prepare on an emotional level for the big tent scene? Heath Ledger: The way we looked it and the way it is is that there are not actually love scenes for the sake of doing a love scene. There are actually stories within each of those moments. The first moment for Ennis was very poignant because it had to be rough; it had to be fighting. He was almost ready to punch him. Once that all settled it had to be this innate passionate adrenaline. It just takes over him. There's another moment in the tent where it was really important to show a glimpse of Ennis in a vulnerable state. It is true intimate love they have for each other. It has to set up the tragedy for the story. It set up the freedom of Brokeback Mountain. http://www.darkhorizons.com/news05/brokeback1.phpSo, to make a short comment long, IMO, neither of them expected to find this kind of relationship on BBM, but they did. It was a surprise to them as well as to the audience.
