Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
When Jack falls in love... and lets Ennis go
jpwagoneer1964:
--- Quote from: littlewing1957 on June 30, 2006, 08:58:05 pm ---To Saucycobblers, I agree with you. However, I do believe Ennis would have made some changes for Jack. One step in that direction was breaking up with Cassie, IMO. I don't know, I think Ennis would have tried to see Jack more, be more available to him, but I don't think he would have lived openly with Jack, as Jack wanted.
--- End quote ---
I'm not sure Ennis would live with Jack either although I would hope so. Unfortunatally his fears were not unfounded and in WY it wasn't and may still be not a safe place to be out.
Marge_Innavera:
--- Quote from: OldeSoul on June 29, 2006, 11:47:42 pm ---I have heard it said, though, that if you love someone you let them go. And I think that even though Jack kept prodding Ennis to live that "sweet life" with him, he ultimately understood that this was the way Ennis always would be- running away from him and coming back. Jack lets him go, Ennis always returns. Ennis even tried to come back that November.
--- End quote ---
IMO, if Jack had lived that would have been decided in November. Jack would never have wanted to let Ennis go and would not have if Ennis could have brought himself to agree to even a compromise. But if not, he was weighing alternatives for what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. In the movie, his relationship with Randall is an open space to be filled in by the viewer: would Randall have divorced his wife to be with Jack? In the one scene where he appears, he doesn't appear to be too happy with her and her seemingly bubble-headed chatter is often rather disrespectful of him, especially since she's talking with two people they've just met.
Not that Randall could ever have "replaced" Jack; as if any person can ever been replaced. But I've heard people say so many times, after a divorce or some other event where they've put someone out of their life: "I love this person so much and always will but I just couldn't cope with them anymore." Or had run out of energy, or hope, or just time in the sense of getting older. Jack was close to 40, an age where he would have started realizing that this romance in a wilderness ghetto wasn't something he could build the rest of his life on.
Marge_Innavera:
--- Quote from: littlewing1957 on June 30, 2006, 08:58:05 pm ---One step in that direction was breaking up with Cassie, IMO. I don't know, I think Ennis would have tried to see Jack more, be more available to him, but I don't think he would have lived openly with Jack, as Jack wanted.
--- End quote ---
There were a number of in-between compromises available all along. One might have been for Jack to get a divorce, get a job in Casper (about 125 miles from Riverton) and let Ennis know he was available. Ennis would have resisted at first, but IMO they would have ended up spending an average of a week a month together; no way Ennis could resist Jack just a two-hours drive away in an anonymous big (to him!) city for long.
The fact that Jack never makes any kind of geographical move himself might indicate that Ennis wasn't the only person putting obstacles up. Jack had wanted so much to escape the poverty-stricken life in Lightning Flat: he would apparently have been willing to forego that if Ennis had been willing to go the whole route and live with him but giving up the lifestyle he'd become accustomed to for something less wasn't something he was willing and/or able to undertake.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Marge_Innavera on August 16, 2006, 10:12:25 am --- no way Ennis could resist Jack just a two-hours drive away in an anonymous big (to him!) city for long.
--- End quote ---
He'd have to worry about running into his sister, though!
But you're right, that would have been a good idea.
twistedude:
Heath says Jack died "the minute he couldn't be with Ennis anymore."
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