Yes, Jeff. It's good to be settled in and up for some serious talkin'. Would you like some Bailey's in your coffee at our round table, or is it still too early where you are?
Like Jake said at the Aero screening, as our lovely world-travelers here who were so lucky to be there reported, Jack really died the moment he knew he couldn't be with Ennis. To me, Jack dies a little bit every time they say good-bye and/or Ennis disappoints him. That's what I mean when I say it wasn't until my second viewing that I really "saw" Jack. What I saw was his heart breaking, a little piece at a time. First, that whole last day on Brokeback in several instances - after offering Ennis the loan and getting cruelly rebuffed, after finding Ennis sitting alone on the hill, after the sucker punch, when they're riding down, that way he spits so bitterly and Ennis makes careful note of it, then the way he shows Ennis he already has a cigarette when he offers his after Aguirre's brow-beating (that's starting to become my favorite wordless moment - at least for today). Next, of course the next year when he finds Ennis hasn't been back (and to add insult to injury, that Aguirre knows about them). Then in the motel, when he says, "What about you?" and only gets a "Me, I... dunno..." - Jack closes his eyes just a little more tightly in pain, as if to hold back tears - another moment that's fastly approaching being my all-time favorite. Then when he basically proposes to Ennis at the campsite and gets turned down. Then finds out why Ennis can't do it. As you can see, I can go on and on. What Jake does throughout that's so extraordinary, especially considering it wasn't filmed chronologically, is shows us a person from whom a little piece is falling away every time we see him, until at the end, on the lake, what's left in his eyes is nothing but emptiness - it's as if all the life in them has slowly leaked out over time. The stark contrast between the soulfulness of his eyes watching Ennis ride away in the flashback and the emptiness in them in real time is all the more startling because we've been watching it slowly transpire, as it does in real life, throughout the course of the movie.
You know what - as beautiful as the writing and photography and direction and music and all of it is, it is Heath and Jake themselves, and only they, who made Ennis and Jack so real for me. I swear they'll be with me all the days of my life just as if they are people I've actually known intimately. Really, they are.