Author Topic: Deliberate Classical References and another 'Jack, I swear' -- by CaseyCornelius  (Read 42555 times)

Offline Front-Ranger

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You have some good points, Sonja and butler. Especially about Mrs. Twist looking scared. I welcome your thoughts.

That Ang Lee is maddening sometimes with the way he presents things so ambiguously. Even the visual of Peter McRobbie as Old Man Twist was puzzling. The way he stared at Ennis with his two differently colored eyes. I've heard that there are myths about people with different colored eyes, that they are oracles or witches, or just see things differently. The way he chewed his tobacco and spit it into a cup. He seemed to me to be the Old Man who, in movies and stories, acts as kind of an oracle and sums the story up. There was such a character in McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, who was also blind.

Then, when Ennis comes down the stairs with the two shirts, he actually turns to Twist and presents the shirts, showing the old man that he has them. Or one of them, anyway. The bloodstained shirt of Ennis's is hidden within Jack's denim shirt. Twist doesn't seem to react at all, but Mrs. Twist reaches for a paper bag (like the one Ennis began his journey with) to put them in.
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Offline x-man

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I know it sounds crazy...but just listen to what he says, and how he says it!

I HAVE listened to what Twist said--hundreds of times, literally.  No way he was gay, or angry at Ennis for not being there for Jack.  Old manTwist made it clear what he thought of Jack as thinking he was too good for the Twist family, and his dislike for Ennis because Ennis was someone Jack cared about.  Whether Twist told Ennis about Randall knowing the effect it would have on Ennis is, I think, up for grabs.  Personally, I think not.  Twist was not a subtle man.
Happiness is the lasting pleasure of the mind grasping the intelligible order of reality.      --Leibniz