OK, so I found the reference to Ennis and light. It's interesting... it turns out that what I was remembering was an interview with Jake!
Here's the quotation-
"We talked a lot. Heath would say stuff to me like, ‘I really think this character is very sensitive to light and I think he’s very sensitive to sound. He doesn’t really like being around any place that’s too noisy.’ We would talk a lot about that. And then when it came to doing love scenes and stuff like that, the best metaphor I can give is that it felt like we were both like, ‘Are you ready? Yeah. Let’s go,’ and we dove off the boat into the deep end. It’s like when you’re terrified of the water, you see a little kid thrown in the water and they’re trying to get back to the boat as fast as they can. That’s what it was like. But at the same time when we were there we really went for it." and the interview was titled
"Jake Gyllenhaal Talks About "Brokeback Mountain"by Mary Rebecca Murray. I don't know exactly where it came from because it's something I saved to my hard-drive without preserving the web link. I think I found it on something like "about.com" but I could be wrong.
Anyway, thanks for your thoughtful replies to my post Katherine. It's interesting to hear about your lesbian friend's disinterest in BBM. I'm not really that surprised. My best lesbian friend still hasn't seen it (and she's a very smart movie buff, etc.). Her reason is that she read the story long ago and didn't like it much. lol. And, interestingly, my best gay boy friend (and he's truly my best friend) really likes BBM, but no where near as much as I do. Well, there's no accounting for taste.
I feel a new thread topic coming on... "how to deal with friends who don't like and/or get BBM." A friend of mine is coming over on Wednesday to watch my copy of BBM with me. She's never seen it yet. And, for what it's worth, as far as I know she's straight. So, anyway, I'm actually nervous about this whole situation. She has no idea of my level of obsession (of the amount of time I've spent discussing the movie, that I'm registered to such a thing as "BetterMost," etc.) and now I'm worried about how I'll deal with this if she doesn't like it. I'll try not to drive her crazy by overwhelming her with observations about buckets and coffeepots and the like. I'll have to restrain myself especially when it comes to that darn topic of the wind.
Of all the millions of times I've seen BBM, I've only watched it with another person once. My 4th theatre viewing was with a girl I was casually dating and it was her first viewing. The fun thing was that a week or so later I was talking to her and she reported the problem of "not being able to get the film out of her head." The first symptoms of Brokeback fever. I was rather pleased.
OK, sorry for the crazy personal tangent.
Trying to return to topic...
I don't think that Ennis is more complex than Jack... they're just complex in different ways. I do think Ennis is significantly more
tortured... by himself primarily. Jack's complexity, I think manifests itself, at least in part by how
smart he is in dealing with Ennis (in understanding and reacting to Ennis's complexities was no easy accomplishment). He knows just what to say, what to hold back, how to find the level of intimacy that Ennis needs, etc. My favorite early example of Jack being smart at the level of flirting is his famous reaction to Ennis's little playful taunt "my Daddy thought all rodeo cowboys were f*** ups". Instead of actually getting mad, or taking this personally, Jack realizes that this is an opportunity to make Ennis smile and loosen up. So, he swallows the little insult and decides to do his little rodeo imitation. I feel like, as silly as that example may be on the surface, it shows a lot about Jack's personality, self-control and determination.