What would it take to help Ennis be OK about himself?

[Monika]

I watched the movie again today and it struck me how much of a Grecian tragedy it is.

Both men are so clearly a product of the land and of their upbringing, so you can say that they are screwed from the get-go. What ensues is destined to happen. I truley don´t believe there´s anything Ennis could have done differently, because it´s simply not in him. He doesn´t have it in him to break free, and neither is it in Jack to stop looking for love in all the wrong places. They are who they are and once they meet, their tragic destinies are sealed


*curtain drops*

[loneleeb3]

They are who they are and once they meet, their tragic destinies are sealed

Boy you can say that twice and mean it!
That about sums it up! 

[Brown Eyes]

I watched the movie again today and it struck me how much of a Grecian tragedy it is.

Both men are so clearly a product of the land and of their upbringing, so you can say that they are screwed from the get-go. What ensues is destined to happen. I truley don´t believe there´s anything Ennis could have done differently, because it´s simply not in him. He doesn´t have it in him to break free, and neither is it in Jack to stop looking for love in all the wrong places. They are who they are and once they meet, their tragic destinies are sealed


*curtain drops*

It is a Classical tragedy!!! Awwww... this comment made me so nostalgic for the ancient old read on imdb by Casey Cornelius about the Classical references in the Lightning Flat scene especially.  Thankfully, Bruce archived the thread here in the IMDb Remarkable Writings subforum.  For anyone who hasn't read this before... it's a true Brokie classic at this point.  Here's the first and most significant post from that old thread... and the link to the archived thread to see more of the discussion that followed from this.  Really brilliant.

http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,10587.0.html

Deliberate Classical references and another 'Jack, I swear...' SPOILERS    
by - CaseyCornelius (Wed Dec 28 2005 11:03:06 )   

UPDATED Wed Dec 28 2005 13:32:50
Brokeback Mountain is becoming an emotional touchstone and a singular experience for practically everyone who sees it. Its depth of expression, detail, and ability to inculcate itself into the unconsciousness of almost everyone who experiences it gives the film the distinction of a truly innovative art work which taps something powerful and myth-based.



SPOILERS

Having seen the film three times, each time more overwhelmed by its brilliance on every level, I've been especially struck by Ennis's visit to Jack's family home in Lightning Flat to retrieve Jack's ashes with the intent to scatter them on Brokeback. Ang Lee's choice of set-design, framing of the action, blocking of the actors, line readings and lighting all make this eerie, stark sequence visually distinct from anything else in the film. It is all redolent of Classical myth and tragedy. Knowing that Ang Lee's background is in theater, it's not far-fetched to assume this is pointedly intentional. It was driving me crazy trying to identify a specific Classical reference until the following struck me.
I've been riffing intensely on this scene and the following may be an interpretive 'stretch', conflating a number of mythic references, but bear with me.

It seems to me to most clearly echo Virgil's "The Aeneid" and the portion in Book VI where Aeneas descends to Hades. Ennis [= Aeneas?] undertakes a 'labor' much as Aeneas in descending to Hades/Hell to recover the ashes of his Beloved Jack and release his spirit from Tartarus where the Sons of Men are imprisoned.

The interior of Jack's family home is like a sepulchre - white-washed, bare, spare, bereft of any ornament, drained of color with a ghostly, unearthly glow illuminating the kitchen through the windows.

Jack's Mother is the Sybil who allows Ennis/Aeneas passage past Cerberus the guardian of the underworld--Jack's Father- the adamantine, unyielding judge of what is meant to be acceptable and allowable.
Jack's Mother/the Sybil mollifies/drugs the intractable Cerberus/Jack's Father with a sweet cake as in "The Aeneid". She offers the same 'cherry cake' to Ennis/Aeneas along with a cup of coffee. Ennis accepts the latter [as an aid to illumination?], rejecting the former, hence, is able to partake of her offer to see Jack's room and the icons and remnants of his life --"I kept his room like it was when he was a boy. I think he appreciated that. You are welcome to go up in his room, if you want."

Ennis, 'undrugged' by the same cherry cake is able to fully experience the earthly remnants of his beloved Jack's life, the details of whose life he has never fully known or realized, which have been protected and maintained in his boyhood room by his true guardian/Mother.

Ennis ascends the deathly, bare stairs to Jack's room where he finds the only true repository of any of the memories of his childhood, the core of his personality. The bare room looking out over the dusty plain and down "the only road" he had every known is heart-breaking. A simple cot for a bed. The rest of the room consists of reminders of Jack's failed dreams. A desk and chair where he failed to make an impression as a scholar. A cowboy figurine is a mocking reminder of his failure to achieve his dream of becoming a cowboy himself. The small .22 hanging in a wooden rack is a mockery of his lack of marksmanship evident earlier in the film. The only thing representing anything of value he might have achieved is the iconic/cult object of his true and abiding love for Ennis - the two shirts hidden away from the prying eyes of Jack's father and the rest of the world. Only his Mother would have been party to their significance.

Jack's Mother/the Sibyl allows him passage out of the house/Hades with the shirts, placing them in a paper bag for transport, even as the Father/Cerberus states adamantly that Jack is "goin' in" the family plot. The final act of hatred of the Father toward his only son is to deny Jack's last wish for his remains to be united with Brokeback, the only reminder of a time and place which gave him his greatest joy in life.

Ennis's final words of "Jack, I swear" echo those of Aeneas when confronted with the 'shade' or ghost of his beloved Dido who committed suicide after he abandoned her.
Aeneas says to Dido's ghost, "I swear by every oath that hell can muster, I swear I left you against my will. The law of God--the law that sends me now through darkness, bramble, rot and profound night--unyielding drove me; nor could I have dreamed that in my leaving I would hurt you so".

Ang Lee's brilliant final shot juxtaposes the closing closet door of Ennis's Brokeback shrine to Jack's eternal memory with the wind-swept fields of ripening golden grain visible through the trailer window and establishes a supreme ambiguity. Are the fields an image of renewal and hope OR an image of intractible inevitability? A symbol of the emotionally limited world which Ennis will inhabit the rest of his days, giving obeisance to the memory of Jack OR a foretaste of the 'Elysian fields' where Ennis/Aeneas will one day be re-united with his beloved?
With the deftness of the great, superior work of art that it is, Ang Lee leaves it to the viewer to answer the final riddle of Brokeback Mountain.