Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
what possessed Jack to take that shirt in the first place?
Brown Eyes:
--- Quote from: meryl on May 28, 2006, 12:15:04 pm ---I think after the punch, Jack's hopes of keeping in touch with Ennis after the summer were considerably dimmed. When he had the chance, he took the shirt, knowing he could at least have a little bit of Ennis left to comfort him. Just seeing those shirts in his closet over the years (and being unable to throw them out) might have been the reason Jack finally got up the nerve to contact Ennis again.
When my dad died, I took one of his shirts and hung it inside my closet door, just like Ennis does in his trailer. Now that my mom is gone, a few of her clothes hang next to it in my closet to this day. There's something comforting about having the clothes they wore when you were with them, when you could still hug them.
--- End quote ---
Meryl, I just wanted to say I think this is a really touching post.
I think Jack was a very sentimental guy. He seems to really cherish the sweet aspects of their relationship like the flashback hug and kisses and cuddling. I'm not at all surprised that he would want something tangible to remind him of Ennis. I like the idea that he wanted Ennis's shirt not just for the shirt itself but also for the blood. The idea of "blood brothers" makes good sense here too (even though it's only Ennis's blood). This seems to be the really important shirt too. Am I correct in remembering that this is the shirt from the first tent scene? it's definitely the shirt for the second tent scene. So, when it's linked up with Jack's own blue shirt it becomes a reminder of their first few encounters as lovers.
Brown Eyes:
I'm posting again to correct one of my observations in the previous post. It turns out that Ennis is wearing his shirt with the broad blue and brown intersecting stripes in the first tent scene and not the shirt that Jack hides in his closet. But, he is definitely wearing the shirt in the second tent scene... and this seems to be the shirt that Jack is washing whilst naked. So, this must mean that Ennis came down from the day with the sheep, after his hillside chat with Jack and changed his shirt before the second tent scene.
::) :D
richardg49:
Just to add to what you said, atz. In the scene immediately after the second tent scene, there's a brief shot of the two guys horseplaying outside the tent the next morning (This scene is the one which is observed by Aguirre with his binoculars). Both are shirtless, but their playfighting has its focus on a shirt which one of them (Ennis?) grabs from the other, and then runs away with it, ie he is playfully 'stealing' it. Isn't this the same shirt that ends up in Jack's and then Ennis's closet? It seems to be the first 'prefiguring' of the motif of stealing shirts in the film. Could someone who has a dvd or video have a look at this to confirm the details, please?
nakymaton:
--- Quote from: richardg49 on June 03, 2006, 10:12:27 pm ---Just to add to what you said, atz. In the scene immediately after the second tent scene, there's a brief shot of the two guys horseplaying outside the tent the next morning (This scene is the one which is observed by Aguirre with his binoculars). Both are shirtless, but their playfighting has its focus on a shirt which one of them (Ennis?) grabs from the other, and then runs away with it, ie he is playfully 'stealing' it. Isn't this the same shirt that ends up in Jack's and then Ennis's closet? It seems to be the first 'prefiguring' of the motif of stealing shirts in the film. Could someone who has a dvd or video have a look at this to confirm the details, please?
--- End quote ---
8) 8) 8)
I think you're right -- it is Ennis's paler shirt, the one that Jack ends up taking. At least, I think it is -- it's too blurry to make the pattern out for sure. (Why didn't Aguirre focus those binoculars better, huh? ;) )
(Click on the attachment to make it bigger. Not much bigger, alas... I'm not good enough with zooming to make a perfect screencap. Of course, the biggest challenge to capping anything from that scene is my imperfect rewind... somehow it kept going back to the 2nd tent scene. ;D )
serious crayons:
I am jumping into this thread way late :-\ ::). There are so many interesting observations here! I'll add a couple I don't remember seeing already:
Sometimes I start to think (*putting on hardhat*) that Jack wasn't really all that committed to Ennis after that first summer. I have said, in debates about Jack's behavior in the last scene on the mountain, that I don't think he seems as upset as Ennis about the summer ending. And when Jack drives off watching Ennis in his rearview mirror he looks merely wistful, whereas Ennis in the alley is heartbroken and torn apart. After they part, Jack goes on to consider other men (well, one man anyway: Jimbo), seemingly open to the idea of a future with someone else, whereas Ennis goes haplessly along with the plans to which he's already committed, but for four years misses Jack constantly.
So, as I said, sometimes I start to think this way. Then I remember the shirts. And they change everything. They're undeniable evidence that Jack knew, even as they were leaving the mountain, how much Ennis would always mean to him, no matter what the future held.
Also, from a storytelling perspective, those shirts are just about the most powerful metaphor I've ever seen in fiction or film: the one enclosing the other, their location in a closet, the shared blood, the 20-year existence, the belated discovery .... :'(
--- Quote from: meryl on May 29, 2006, 02:32:14 pm ---I'm sure others have pointed out that Ennis wears the same grey overshirt in all these scenes, grey being the muted form of Jack's signature blue and also suggestive of Ennis's depressed frame of mind. The shirt has an interesting red detail right over the heart like a symbolic wound. In the same way, each of the four last scenes has a neutral blue-grey palette punctuated by bits of red.
--- End quote ---
Here's another odd thing someone somewhere mentioned recently: the gray overshirt that Ennis wears in all of the last few scenes is very similar to the jacket his dad wears in the Earl flashback. Might be a coincidence. I certainly don't think it's an attempt to associate Ennis' viewpoint with his dad's. But maybe the jacket just sort of generally signals death and tragedy.
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