Meryl, you have such an amazing visual memory and ability to notice details.
I keep trying to see things like the yin/yang in the barn door outside Jack's room, but every time I watch that part of the movie I find that I can't look at anything but Ennis's face. (I mean, I've never even seen Jack's rock collection. And you know how much that means!
)
starboardlight -- yeah, the blood is really important, isn't it? (I did read one of Casey Cornelius's threads on TOB after Meryl pointed me to it, and I think I remember a bunch of people going into really impressive detail about the symbolism of the blood.) The blood reminds me of the entire scene, of how the blood got on both shirts. Of flirting gone sour. Of Jack trying to take care of Ennis, and Ennis lashing out, pushing Jack away.
There's just so much love and pain and regret wrapped up in the shirts.
There's an odd detail in the published screenplay... Ennis's shirt, the one with the blood on it, is described as being denim. So it wasn't the screenwriters who envisioned the color scheme. It's interesting... I don't know when the published screenplay was locked in, and I know there are a lot of details that are different. But the colors associated with the two characters seem so symbolic -- I can't imagine Ennis wearing a denim shirt, unless he wanted specifically to be reminded of Jack on the mountain.
There's a little cranky corner of me that says, "yeah, the colors are really symbolic, but you know, Jake looks really really good in dark blue/red/purple/black, and Heath looks really really good in muted colors." But then I listen to people who do the symbolism thing really well and I tell the cranky corner of me to shut up, because the stuff you all are saying is just so cool.