This topic and this forum - every now and then I step back and realize how lucky I am I found them, and all of you!
How quirky and lonely I might feel without knowing all these kindred spirits were here! And the differences we express only enhance this feeling, since it shows none of us are losing any of our precious individuality in this splendid group swim. There's not a person who has contributed here who has not said at least one thing that resonates, or brings me back into the world of my first responses to these characters. I want to acknowledge every one of you who has given me that thrill but what would be the point?
I've been thinking about comments close to the head of this topic, from those who have a problem with the line in the story about Ennis being unwilling to face Jack. Katherine said, 'I am one of those who considers it flawed in the story -- and, I guess, the screenplay -- because of that "Ennis does not embrace him face to face because he does not want to see or feel that it is Jack he holds" line.' And Amanda agreed.
An important word in Proulx's sentence for me has always been the adverb: "Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face..." This is Jack looking back on the whole history of their times together: "Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory..." In all their years this is the single moment of artless, charmed happiness...yet this was at a very early stage of their love before they had any inkling of what it would become over the years. Their love on Brokeback had all the perfection of the newborn and all the newborn's lacks, and Jack is relishing the one though aware of the other, from the vantage of years. Denial was still possible on Brokeback - you had only not to look at what you were doing! We are not told in the story how long after their first pairing this embrace was, but IF they did embrace face to face that first summer at a time when it was light enough to see each other's faces, the dozy embrace was a waystation to that daylit embrace. What a dimension Proulx adds to the story with her deliberate mystery! She does not say whether they kissed on Brokeback, or kissed when it was light. What we are allowed to see is always set off against what we are not.
At the reunion kiss, in broad daylight, it is obvious that Ennis' then has vanished forever. 'Easily as the right key turns the lock tumblers...' Even this line will imply to some of us that Ennis and Jack are thrown back into what was so familiar to them from Brokeback, to others that they find themselves compelled to do what they had never done before.
I am one of those who feels the reunion kiss happened the way it did partly because both Jack and Ennis had become unguarded about public displays of love because of their family life in the years between. Both had some affection for their wives, and Ennis had a powerful affection for his daughters, and they would have had no reason to be inhibited about the occasional public kiss. Ennis had progressed in the knowledge of how sexual feeling and family affection can coexist towards a partner. When Ennis and Jack began to hug each other publicly they were doing something rare but socially acceptable between friends who had not seen each other for years. Their experiences with their wives and children made the way from the hug to the public kiss short and easy...and ravenous hunger did the rest.
Getting back to the then - one of the reasons we have not focused on it before is that the word is not carried over to the screenplay instructional comment. The screenplay says, 'even though he knows that Ennis does not embrace him face to face because he does not want to see or feel that it is Jack he holds'. This makes the realization concurrent with the embrace itself, whereas in the story the realization comes years later. You could say that the film softens Annie's antisentimental attitude, because it shows the young Jack in a state of pure bliss without any 'realization', but you could also say that the film visually restores (with Jack's contrasted faces) some of the contrast of past and present which were in the story but lost in the screenplay comment.
