Not much I can really ad to this discussion... Other than my road killing a few things I mentioned not long after I first time saw Master Lee's interpretation of Annie Proulx's words.
Missouri is not Wyoming, but there is something so familure about the world Jack and Ennis exist within, that I know most of the characters in this film as though they were my own relatives. The way of speaking, that cadence, that bravado couched in terms as polite as a good horse, and as dangerous as a rattle snake. These characters are ten years older than I am. Then, I remember the world they grew up in. It had it's good points, just as it sure had it's bad ones.
I guess what I can say is, for the first time in my life I have a film in which I don't have to transpose the love the characters have for one another. I don't even have to think about their way of speaking. I grew up with our own rural northern Missouri version of these two good oll boys. And the real hard part, I dam well knew the fear Ennis had of what would happen if anyone else found out. I think for a lot of us older gay folks, that is a whole lot of what kicks us in the gut with this story. It's like Jack and Ennis are two parts of our own soul. The dreamer that can always see the possibilities in life, and the realist that knows just how fast this world can kill you if you make the wrong move.
A universal love story? Perhaps mixed race couples of that same period would understand why that feels like a bit of stretch for those of us that ended up with this label called gay, and a lot more far less polite terms. Just one more gay tragedy, a friend of mine said. In a way yes, but unlike the plethora of AIDS tragedies and Mathew Shepard remakes, it is the characters themselves that unwind all hope once they leave their piece of heaven that fall of 1963. A piece of heaven Ennis can never bring himself to name beyond 'this thing'. Am I the only one that feels a longing in Jake Gyllenhaal's Jack to put his feelings into words. Even as Jack knows, those very words would send Ennis running for his life.
A universal love story? What other love can so threaten one's own sense of self, can make one question what it is to be a man or a woman, and drive one to deny that what they are feeling is that undefinable madness we call love? To never speak those words, I love you? If that is universal, this is one scary world we are living in these days.
Thanks Gary for your post! I was affected in the same fashion as you by Brokeback. The feeling you are expressing are also mine.Like you I grew up in a small rural town, mine is here in Texas. I am about the same age as you are. I immediately related to the story of Ennis and Jack and felt that I understood them both. I'd like to also have a try at the discussion as to whether Brokeback, both the short story and the movie, are either "Universal" or a "Gay Love Story". And I have a message of hope for men like Ennis who have known a great deal of fear and frustration their entire lives.
At its heart Brokeback is a story of two closeted rural Gay men and their unhappy love affair over the decades. The film and the short story have universal appeal, but at its heart it is a love story of two Gay men. I don't mean to put words in your mouth but I think that like you, I experienced the closet, rural homophobia, and various states
of denial and acceptance thru the years. Like Jack in Brokeback, I had an long running affair with a deeply closeted and homophobic man. I won't go into the details here, but perhaps one day I'll discover a thread on Bettermost that makes me comfortable with relating my decades long love for Chris up to his death in 1999. I read the short story before I saw the movie, but it was the movie that liberated my feelings. I knew immediately that at last I had found "our" story. The story of men who grew up like Ennis and Jack. I most definitely do not deny the elements of universal appeal in Brokeback. I recall watching heterosexual love stories involving frustrated couples in doomed love affairs and I felt for them. An example would be David Lean's 1946 masterpiece "Brief Encounter". I felt so sad for the couple when at their last meeting in the train station before he leaves for S. Africa they knew that they would never meet again.I can relate to them even though I am not heterosexual, and I did not live in a middle class environment in 1946 Britain. But, if I were a woman, or man, who had experienced the strictures that couple encountered at that time in that environment, the movie would have a far greater punch for me. It would be my story, like Brokeback is my story. One of the liberating bi-products of my strongly emotional Brokeback experience is that I now experience movies like "Brief Encounter" much more intensely than I did before.
Now to the hopeful news! What I have found over the last year plus 6 months is a growing number of older gay and bisexual men who grew up in rural homophobic circumstances ,and who have been or are still deeply closeted, that have grabbed on to the Brokeback experience and are now for the first time in their lives able to relate their deepest feelings. I have encountered a number of such men here in the DFW area and also during my summers in Montana. Slowly, these men, because of both Brokeback and their advancing ages are speaking out and seeking each other out. When I speak with these men I always urge them to go online and browse the Brokeback web sites. I am partial to Bettermost and highly recommend it for them. I have noticed over the last 3 months increasing numbers of these previously silent men are joining the ranks of us Bettermostians. Annie Proulx made an interesting comment in her intro to the book / screenplay combo published last year. To paraphrase her, she noted the the highest suicide rate in Wyoming is among single men over 60. There is a very good reason why, many of that number are closeted Gay men, who like Ennis, have lived a life of fear and frustration.Finally, they "just can't take it any more". I believe Brokeback is quietly helping to heal the broken hearts of many men who were previously leading silent frustrated lives. I will retire in December, but I don't intend to sit idle. One of my projects will be to help network and reach out to these many forgotten, largely silent men, who now at long last are finding their voices.
Have a great week!