Sometimes I really, really wish Annie Proulx would not have written the story as it is.
Bang, there I said it! And I mean it.
I love the story and the movie. And I love my obsession with this movie. I love to be on BetterMost, to discuss the movie, to analyze, to find new thoughts about it and on and on.
After five months I still can't get them out of my head. I still wake up in the morning and Ennis and Jack are on my mind. I go to bed and fall asleep thinking about them or mulling over something I read here in the forum. Not every day, but most days.
They are always close to the surface of my mind.
That's the part I'm fine with. But:
I have enough of the heartbreak. I want a happy end for Ennis and Jack. Seriously.
Maybe we all would not be here, maybe we all would have long forgotten about this movie if it had a happy end. But sometimes I would trade the wonderful experience of this movie, of being here with you, for a happy end.
Right now I have such a moment. To be more exact: I feel like this since I saw the movie again last Sunday. I've seen it many times now. But last Sunday it hit me like it was the second time (my second viewing was much more intense than the first). There it was again: the emotional gut punch most of us know. And it didn't go away since then.
I haven't been around here for the last few days, because I've frenetically read fanfiction. Alwayas in search of a story that would bring my heart on order again. I haven't found such a story. Bad luck, most of the stories I read were sad ones. I found some with happy endings that I hadn't read before, but they were mostly too soppy for my taste.
I keep telling myself it's just a movie, just a story, just pure fiction. Ennis and Jack are not real and therefore there's no reason that Proulx's imagination, her version of the story, should be any more valid than the ones I try to imagine myself or the ones any fanfic writer wrote.
But WHY, the hell, does it have such a profund effect on me (us) then? Why does it feel so real? Why do we feel like Ennis and Jack were real? Why do we not just stop?
Again, I feel like I did at the beginning of my BBM journey: I'm so unutterable glad that you all are here too. Glad that my only fellow Brokie in RL is still as infected as I am. Makes me feel less like a weirdo.
This has become a long post and I zoned out a bit. The question I wanted to ask you is: Do you sometimes wish Annie Proulx would have written the story different? Not only as a short thought, as a kind of joke, but seriously?