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An umpteenth viewing and... three revelations

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ednbarby:
So I just got done seeing it for my I've-seriously-lost-count (I'm guessing around 20th) time on HBO, and here are the new things I've come away with:

1.)  DavidInHartford was right - Jack would vote Republican.  I got that from this line "Why bother earning it? - if the taxes don't eat it up, the inflation will."  Taxes = Democrats.  Why did I never see that before?  In general?  I've wondered for years why my blue collar brothers are such Republicans - why anyone who works basically minimum wage and barely squeaks by would vote Republican - and I got it answered for me tonight.  Jack would vote Republican because he sees the Democrats as eating away the money he makes in taxes.  Ennis, if at all, would vote Democrat because he secretly sides with them for pulling for the "little man."  David was right.

2.)  Brokeback Mountain is my Cry Therapy.  A coworker goes to Busch Gardens in Tampa every year to ride about the scariest roller coaster in the world.  Over and over and over again.  Why?  So he can scream his lungs out.  And feel fresh and new afterwards.  Brokeback Mountain is the only thing, just about, in this world that can make me cry.  Not cry - weep.  I still take a low dosage of antidepressants since the bout I had with post-partum depression five years ago - I've tried to wean myself off of them three times, now, and it keeps coming back.  But the thing about SSRIs is that they make something in your brain kick in just when you're about to cry - and - stop it.  Must be a substance all straight men have in their brains naturally.  So, just when I've been at my most vulnerable in my everyday life - fighting with my husband - at my wit's end with my 4-year-old - feeling like a failure at my job - I haven't been able to squeeze out a single tear.  But Brokeback makes me weep.  Even after nineteen or some odd viewings.  I need Brokeback.

3.)  The Shirts.  OK.  How THE HELL can anyone not be moved by the friggin' shirts???  It must be homophobia and nothing else.  Otherwise, I don't get how you can come to a point in a movie where you see that someone has carried a torch FOR TWENTY FUCKING YEARS to the extent that they have spirited away their love's shirt and kept it hidden in a childhood closet, covered over with their own shirt from that same period, and not be reduced to a PUDDLE OF FUCKING TEARS.  What is FUCKING WRONG with you?  I'm sorry, but again, I have the diagnosis:  Homophobia.  You CANNOT get past the fact that these are two men instead of a man and a woman, can you?  Allow me to turn all those hackneyed premises on their ears for a moment and ask you this:  If this were a story about a man and a woman and say... a notebook... would you not be equally as moved?  Morons.

Kd5000:
Democrat voters were as rare in Wy as were Republican voters in the Deep South/ TX panhandle during that time period.   :) 
Of course, things have changed. Right now,  I'd say a Jack type would be a Republican and Ennis would be a Democrat.

I though the mention of inflation and smoking the joint were to let us know that there now in the 1970's. Inflation was a big concern in that decade.  Some ppl have complained to me they needed a better time guideline. I guess they want the year the events are transpiring to be labeled at the beginning of every new "chapter."

Yes, I sent an e-mail to a film critic who had a big article the day after the OSCARS saying why the better picture won.  He was quite upset in his  reply e-mail to me explaining that not enough of the film was devoted to showing Jack and Ennis falling in love, being in love, etc. But he did mention the shirts as being evidence they had feelings for each other, but they needed more moments like that (the shirts). Like HELLO!   Should Juliet should have done something more drastic then committing suicide to show she loved Romeo.  :'( 

RouxB:
After my upteenth viewings, here is (some of) what I came away with tonight:

Jack's soul did not "die" after Ennis divorce scene (not that I really thought that it did)

Ennis did own up to his queerness-lake scene-but then denies it again with "I know what they got for boys like you" to Jack.

I, yep me, am ready to accept that Jack needed to leave Ennis in order to save them both. But, possibly contrarily, I think Ennis was at a cross roads and, had Jack not died, something would have changed.

I am wrung out fromt his viewing. I haven't been hit this hard since my 5th, and most sorrowful, viewing in Birmingham while with my father.

I wish this had spell check...

ednbarby:

--- Quote from: Kd5000 on November 26, 2006, 11:48:39 pm ---Yes, I sent an e-mail to a film critic who had a big article the day after the OSCARS saying why the better picture won.  He was quite upset in his  reply e-mail to me explaining that not enough of the film was devoted to showing Jack and Ennis falling in love, being in love, etc. But he did mention the shirts as being evidence they had feelings for each other, but they needed more moments like that (the shirts). Like HELLO!   Should Juliet should have done something more drastic then committing suicide to show she loved Romeo.  :'( 
--- End quote ---

Exactly.  Honestly, it all boils down to this:  If you don't get it, you either a.) don't get Romeo and Juliet or b.) are a homophobe.

There I go being all black and white and no gray again, but hell, to me, black and white is all there is.

silkncense:

--- Quote from: RouxB on November 26, 2006, 11:58:24 pm ---I, yep me, am ready to accept that Jack needed to leave Ennis in order to save them both. But, possibly contrarily, I think Ennis was at a cross roads and, had Jack not died, something would have changed.

--- End quote ---


I CAN'T believe that Ennis would (as opposed to 'needed' to) leave Ennis.  He'd think about it, he'd talk about it, he'd threaten it...but he wouldn't.  At least not then.  If he'd been at that point, he would not have gone to Ennis & held him the way he did when Ennis collapsed.  His mind may have been there, but his heart definitely wasn't.

And, so WHY is the impact different at different times?  And why to us and not to others -that is still a mystery to me.

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