Interesting thread. I know it is an older one but I am new here, and I hope no one minds a 'late' response...
I realized for the first time while reading through this thread that Ennis actually reminds me a lot of my dad: lots of inner turmoil, a big investment in being the 'strong man', explosive temper, periodically uncontrollable overflow of emotion. (Ennis seems to have controlled it more around his kids than my dad did - lucky them!) The thing is, the 'strong, stoic man' image can be very deceptive. It just means that the emotional contents are under pressure. It isn't surprising that Ennis, though he might look like (and see himself as) a man who never cries, cries six times in this movie.
I would differentiate, though, between the times when Ennis simply has a single tear dripping down his face and the two times we see him actually break down and sob - in the culvert, and during the lake fight scene. In both of those, the sobs are torn out of him: this man is tormented. Contrast that to Jack, crying in the truck after the divorce rejection scene: he just lets himself cry. If that had been Ennis, he'd've had to pull over and start punching the dashboard or something.
I must say that as a kid, watching my dad have extreme and dramatic meltdowns did make me think he was weak. I don't think that was societal conditioning as much as the contrast between what he tried to present and what he ended up being reduced to. It was disillusioning: I'd think, if this huge, strong man can just dissolve like that, then the whole image of masculine strength must be an illusion. I didn't know the Jack model was a possibility.
Now I just think.. poor, poor Ennis. I'm so glad he had Jack.
