yep, i do think the small details sometimes reveal something about the bigger picture. in this case, I'm just taking note of the fact that Ennis, in the short story, was not as conflicted about being intimate with Jack. He didn't pull away, but rather ran full throttle with it.
Definitely. So how do you feel about that, Nipith? Personally, I like the movie's version better. Ennis' inner struggle, and ultimate conquering of his fears, makes the situation more interesting for me. But perhaps others have different opinions ...
With Ennis, I kinda want to take what I get from the story into the movie. I want to see him as clearly understanding that he's queer but just doesn't know how to fit into the world, not being able to envision a life as a queer man, being afraid of other people finding out. I want to see his fear as that of the consequences as oppose to being afraid to be who he is. I haven't made up my mind if that is the case or not in the film.
No, in my opinion the Ennis you describe is Story Ennis. I think Move Ennis IS afraid to be who he is. But actually that's what I like about him. To me, that sets his love of Jack against greater odds and greater stakes -- thereby intensifying the importance of their relationship. And it makes his emotional journey longer, thus more moving.
And so on. It doesn't always mean something, but many times it does, so it seems worth pinning down those details.
But, "Ennis' inner struggle, and ultimate conquering of his fears," are actually in the original short story as published in "Close Range." He never quite conquers his fears in the last pages of the story; but, in the opening italicized paragraphs, it seems that he has become more accepting of his former relationship with Jack as evidenced in his last day on the Stoutamire ranch before he goes to stay with his married daughter.The way that Annie Proulx wrote those two paragraphs at the start of the Dead Line, Ltd., copyright 1997, version of the story, it makes me think that if Ennis were to meet another man toward whom he felt sexually attracted, he might begin a relationship with him if he also liked him very much, too . . . AND feel in love with him like he was with Jack Twist. It took about or more than 20 years for Ennis to decide that he had been in love with Jack since the summer of 1963.
Even AP's "You know I ain't queer" description was rather dismissive, as if she means to suggest that neither of them believed it.
That's funny. I just finished writing this, in so many words, on the "job switch" thread.
It was big enough, warm enough, and in a little while they deepened their intimacy considerably.The screenplay writers and/or the movie makers ignored what is in the quoted sentence which was even in the New Yorker Magazine version of the short story.I say that when Jack felt the rise in Ennis's Levi's, the reason that took Ennis's left hand and put it on his (Jack's) erect cock was to show Ennis that he was just a horny, too.
