Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum

Lies and deception

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Ellemeno:
I have a pretty big BBM poster on my office wall, and as I was passing it a few minutes ago and looking at Our Boys, it hit me how much of the day to day they each were living was full of lies.  When they were talking to anyone who thought they knew them, they were actually lying about who they were and what was important to them.  Looked at from that facet, the constant dishonesty required is breathtaking.

How did living with this chronic deception affect them in the long term?  How did it affect their sense of integrity?  What were they feeling toward the people who cared about them, whom they were deceiving?  Did they occasionally or even frequently consider coming clean with at least one person in their lives in Riverton or Childress?  How could they bear the loneliness of not really being known by anyone?

Is part of what draws us to them the fact that we feel like we know them better than anyone else in their lives ever did (other than each other)? 

bbm_stitchbuffyfan:
As far as your last question -- and that's a very good one -- I have no idea. Although, it is pretty neat that we know them better than their wives and kids, huh?

Otherwise, I think it took a toll on them. I'm sure they each felt an extreme disconnect when Alma or Lureen or someone would act as though (s)he knew everything about Jack/Ennis and it might have embittered them from time to time.

It would make utmost sense for them to consider time and time again to come clean but it also would make sense that this dwelling would never lead to acting on confessing.

No wonder why they felt like they were wasting their lives away in heterosexual domesticity (you know Ennis felt it too, he was just afraid to take a chance).

coffeecat33:
“He was a Friend of Mine” is playing, I just finished breaking down sobbing while watching the movie. Some more things in the movie became clearer to me.
Lies and deception “Without getting up he threw deadwood on the fire, the sparks flying up with their truths and lies, a few hot points of fire landing on their hands and faces, not for the first time, and they rolled down into the dirt.” – from Brokeback Mountain, the story by A. Proulx
The scene when Jack receives the postcard about the divorce and drives 14 hours to see Ennis, thinking now that Ennis is free he decided to share a “sweet life” with Jack and he is sadly mistaken. It’s poignant to see Jack so elated as he drives 'up' to Wyoming singing “King of the Road” and then is so dejected when he drives back 'down' to Texas/Mexico while Emmy Lou sings “A Love That Will Never Grow Old.” (OT: a song co-written with Bernie Taupin who of course shared a “sweet life” with Elton John. At least for a while.)

I didn’t understand why, at the lake scene, Jack asks Ennis, “All this time, and you ain’t found nobody else to marry?” I wasn’t sure what Jack was getting at, but I think it’s because once divorced, Ennis would be able to live with Jack but he refuses. When Ennis was married to Alma, he felt responsible to her, too, but after the divorce he doesn’t have that responsibility and still he refuses to live with Jack or at least be with him more often. I think it’s bitterness on Jack’s part (which comes out a little later) because Ennis didn't have the same excuse he once had of being married and having a life with Alma. He didn’t re-marry. Jack asks Ennis about a woman in his life and he answers he’s “puttin the blocks to a good-lookin little gal” He is so indifferent to Cassie that he doesn’t even mention her name. Watch Ennis/Heath’s face when Jack says he’s seeing… a rancher’s wife and they both laugh. Ennis’ face is suffused with love and affection toward Jack. Even isolated together in the mountains – no one around, they each keep up a lie. I think it’s mainly generated by Ennis who can never admit to being gay and Jack always walking on eggshells around Ennis.

Ennis laughs about Jack having an affair with a neighbor’s wife, but, when Ennis has a delayed reaction about going someplace warm, like Mexico, Ennis is so jealous he’s kill any man he met who had been with Jack. Ennis won’t be with Jack, but he doesn’t want anyone else (no man) to be with him, either.

About 30 years ago I was in a similar situation. I was in a relationship with a woman at a time where being gay/lesbian wasn't understood or accepted and it was hard sometimes. Coming out is not just something that happens once, it happens again and again every time you meet someone new and are in a new situation. Yeah, it takes a toll on a person. Jack "drank a lot." Ennis was alienated from other people and got in to physical fights. One of the saddest scenes in the film to me is Ennis sitting there all by himself eating pie in the cafe.

I think the director, Ang Lee, said that occasionally you get to glimpse private moments on film which we certainly got to do with BBM. I think the private moments with these two men is part of why they feel so real to us and we feel close to them.
cc33

Kd5000:
I just think they went thru the motions with their wives for lack of a better wordchocie.  They were both detached from their heterosexual world, with the exception that they may have connected with their children. Jack goes the motion of kissing his wife on the cheek and accompanies her to social functions.  He drowns himself in alcohol to ease the pain (he drank alot per his wife) and lives for his trip to WY. 

Ennis keeps up the domestic facade for awhile (even though he gets divorced, he still makes no changes which would make him less lonely), but then he simply withdraws from mainstream society, waiting for his time for Jack and an occasional visit from his children. When Jack is gone from his life, I think a part of Ennis dies as well.

ednbarby:
Thanks, Cat, for finally illuminating that "All this time, and you still haven't found anyone to marry?" line for me.  Sheeee-it.  All these viewings, and I still hadn't figured that out!  Not fully, anyway.  And now it makes so much sense, I feel like a dunderhead for not seeing it before.  Of COURSE Jack is saying that out of bitterness - like, "You couldn't be with me but you couldn't get married, either?"  On a much lesser level, that happened to me.  The guy I was so in love with in my early 20s didn't want to settle down.  It wasn't one of those cases where the very next girl he dated he married - he did play the field for a couple of years after we broke up.  But it almost broke my heart more that he'd have rather been alone most of the time than been with me.  I was almost kind of relieved when he did get serious with someone and ultimately marry her.  That was a more palatable reason than that he just didn't love me enough to want to be with me.

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