First off Mel... You ought to take up writing. You got more going than a lot of folks that think they do have it going on.
I'm one of those that read the story a couple of months before I saw the film. Those few short pages reached into me and tore apart decades of seeing the world through Ennis's eyes. It kicked me in the gut, and it never has every fully let up after that. It still amazes me that the film did the justice to the story that it did. That's a real rare thing in any adaptation.
Maybe this is not the place for this, I'm not too sure. If it needs moving, just let me know where it lands.
There's been all kinds of things written about Jack's death. But in one interview with Jake I caught, he said he felt Jack died when he realized there was never going to be a life with Ennis. That one sentence from Jake has been chewing on me for awhile. Cause it sure does shed a light on the change that comes over Jack after he drives that twelve hundred miles for nothing. Where in tears, he drives clear to Mexico to find physical release of a fix for the death of this hope, perhaps his soul, if not his love for one Ennis DelMar.
Part of what attracts me to Mz. Proulx's writing is it is real. Nothing in life is a true perfect moment. Every expression we make, ever action we initiate, all of it flows from what has gone before in our lives. We think we fix one problem in our lives, just to find it has found a different way to express itself. With luck, that new way is healthier, and a bit less destructive. And with luck... not so born again, we think we have all the answers for every body else's lives, while we're still trying to bring balance to our own souls.
Then, here I am ah wandering around the coffee pot again... Not to sure where I'm headed, or how all this is connected.