I was hoping to hear your opinion!
I never disappoint!
I'm not sure about the next section of your post. You agreed with some of a quote of mine (blue), and so I assume you don't agree with the rest. And you quoted some quotes from Lee, McMurtry, and Ossana after this, so I'm wondering whether they have relevance to your not agreeing with the un-highlighted part of my quote. But I'm not sure.
As much as I find the films' creators' statements to be interesting, one thing I have noticed is that they all say different things about the same thing at different times. For example, the comments about Cassie are from one perspective from one of them in one interview. I've read interviews where they each give totally different explanations about Cassie -- explanations that are different from each other at the time, and statements that are different from their own words in other interviews. I do not believe this to be an inconsistency on their parts. I find it to be strong support for the assertion that the film has so many levels and layers. Each time any one of them answers the same question in different interviews, the answers given are slightly different. At that moment, they are looking at it from this angle or that angle.
As an even better example, I'll look at one of the quotes you gave:
Ossana: It’s the first time in the film that he doesn’t disappoint someone, male or female.
Here, the object of her comment is more this particular scene than the film as a whole. She's giving emphasis to the import of what Ennis has done in this scene. How do we know this? Because taking the statement as a statement of Ennis' character throughout the film, it's not a true statement. At the SNIT scene, Jack waited in the tent to see what Ennis would do. Jack did not know whether Ennis would come in or ride off to be with the sheep. He was hopin', of course, but he didn’t know. So Jack had a hope. He hoped that Ennis would come into the tent. And what did Ennis do? He came into the tent. In other words, he did not disappoint Jack, a male. So we have an example where Ennis did not disappoint someone, male or female, way back in the first 45 minutes or so of the film.
(And of course there are other examples... he didn't disappoint Jack in the elk shoot scene (Jack wanted other food and Ennis provided)... he didn't disappoint Alma on their wedding day (she wanted to get married and he showed up)... he didn't disappoint society on that day either (he did what was expected of him)... he didn't disappoint his boss when he hurried the girls to Alma at the store so that he could go to work... he didn’t disappoint Jack at the first reunion scene -- in fact, he probably gave Jack a lot more than Jack was expecting, maybe even hoping for at that moment... he didn't disappoint his girls by showing up for Thanksgiving dinner... he must not have disappointed Cassie for quite a while during their relationship -- she certainly would have liked it to have continued ---- so Ossana's comment cannot be taken as a final, definitive statement about Ennis' character. She's just trying to give weight to the fact that we know Ennis did disappoint a lot of people a lot of the time and that here he didn’t disappoint Jr.)
You see what I'm getting at? Just because they describe a particular scene or character in one way at one interview, it doesn’t mean that that's a final and definitive answer for all time. It’s just one of them giving one of many perceptions that each one has about something.
I'm not even sure if it was necessary to point this out, because, to be honest, I really didn’t understand where you were going with your message at that point. And I take this as my failing. I could just as easily have called myself "ruthlessly stupid!"
I just have the belief, however, that he did not see himself as gay, period.
Yes. I agree with this. I think part of it has to do with how Ennis defines "queer." Obviously we can’t ask Ennis to define "queer," and even if we did, he'd probably say "Huh, what?" But from some of his statements, I get the feeling that he understands "queer" as a bad thing, an unnatural thing, and maybe most importantly, a non-love thing. This is why I believe he has such a disconnect in his mind between what he does and what he is.
What I find interesting is that when Ennis goes up to Jack's room, and he opens the window .... IMO, it symbolizes the opening of himself to Jack. Jack's closet door was open, but the shirts were (partially) hidden. I think that illustrates two things: 1) that Jack was more open to his own sexuality (i.e. that he was gay), but 2) he kept his relationship with Ennis hidden, private and cherished.
The shirts in Ennis' closet represent his love for Jack. It, too, is kept hidden, private and cherished. But he closes the closet door. IMO, he is accepting his love for Jack, but he keeps, even to himself, his sexuality "in the closet".
This works for me!
Until next time...
