Jeff
Barb is right, we'll all have to agree to disagree.
Maybe that's because Jack is not really good with a gun? It's just one more thing he might brag that he knows how to do but really doesn't? Ang made sure Jake and Heath knew how to ride and rope and handle livestock and you're saying that Ang neglected something as basic as gun-handling when there are two scenes that are clearly meant to contrast the marksmanship of our two guys? I don't think so.
Yes, Jack is supposed to be a bad marksman, but I'm stickin' to my guns on this one. When I was a teenager my dad and I shot targets. I was a lousy shot, but at least I know you have to raise a rifle higher than Jake does in order to sight what you're aiming at. It would have been possible for Jack to be a bad marksman and at least have it look like he's trying.
I shoot target pistol and used to shoot skeet. With skeet, I had no poise, no technique, no sense of aiming or hand to eye coordination and I still managed to hit the clay pigeons from time to time.
Agree. But since the scene Jack has with Bobby playing riding him around the combine is an added scene and not in the story I think that that's what it means . What adds to that is that the scene takes place not at their house, but at Newsome's Farm Equipment, that IMO implies Jack has time or wants to play with his son on the job, while Lureen does/can not. It was a family business. I imagine both Jack and Lureen spent a lot of time there. Since Lureen was the owner, and Jack only a salesman, he could 'clock out' at 5 pm, go pick up Bobby from school/caretaker while Lureen stayed behind to shut down the business, tally the sales, balance the books, etc.
I think you're reading too much into the combine scene.
Maybe or maybe not. Ang didn't waste one inch of film in this movie. Almost everything means something. Why not a scene of Jack playing with his son in the backyard of their home, tossing a ball or playing with a dog? In some living area in the home he shared with Lureen? Show a real domestic scene like Ang did with Ennis and his family scenes? Instead they show Jack playing with his son in a combine on the Newsome business parking lot. I think it was intentional.
Agree, but Ennis' fireworks scene was about his irritation and feelings of being trapped. Notice that his 'little girls' exposed to such language are not of an age to even understand what is being said. Heck, Jenny is practically an infant! Ennis suggests treating them to ice cream, but parents often offer a treat when children have been sick as an incentive (plus it was also wonky that Ennis would buy ice cream for an infant and a two year old), but this is very very early in his relationship with Alma. Before he even meets Jack again. Ennis only promises to take the girls to the church picnic because they pleaded with him. He apparently had not intended to go nor offered to take them before.
Ennis's own stated reason for his actions in the fireworks scene is the presence of his children. He's acting to protect his children. We have no way of knowing whether Ennis knew about the picnic, and in the end, he still agrees to take them because they want to go.
Protect his children from what? Bad language they didn't understand? How is bad language from some smelly bikers who weren't even talking to Ennis and Alma a threat to his children so that they needed protection? No, this scene was about Ennis losing it, not about Ennis 'the protector'. If anything, it was a ironic shot, the icon of Americana, the cowboy color-drenched in red/white/blue fireworks standing up for his family, when his reaction is really an overreaction born of internal desperation and anger. As for the picnic, he may or may not have known about it, but if he did know about it, he apparently had no desire to go until his children pleaded for HIM to take them. Alma is perfectly capable of taking them, but it's Ennis they ask.
True, but Jack still goes. Could Alma have dragged Ennis? If a man doesn't want to go somewhere, he doesn't go. Like Ennis. Jack went. The Newsome's are a big, well known family business in Childress. It would be expected that they're part of the local social set that does such things. Jack would have known that from the beginning.
So what's your point? A man might not go, but a henpecked husband would, and Lureen clearly wears the pants in the family because she controls the money. You're more or less saying what I said, they were there because of their social position.
Not really. IMO Jack goes because it doesn't bother him TO go. He doesn't have to be henpecked to be there. Ennis, it bothers him to go, so he doesn't go. Alma can't make him. Jack doesn't seem to have a problem with it. He doesn't look like he's having a good time, but it doesn't look like he really hates it either. And he certainly knows how to dance - much better than he did in 1966. You COULD improve your dancing skills by dancing around your living room at home, but likely he learned that while going out with Lureen - regularly.
Soooooo after five years of being faithful to Ennis, an unselfish healthy young man raging with hormones that cannot be assuaged by his wife would just go home and keep doing without because his lover tells him that's the way it's going to be?
Jack: I'm not you! I can't make it on a few high-atitiude fucks a year!
And he's not and Jack shouldn't be expected to be an Ennis and act like a monk because he can't get what he needs from his lover.
Sounds practical and pragmatic, not selfish. It also sounds sad. Jack is not happy at all that he does it.
So you're condoning infidelity
Of course. One of the main storylines is a love story between two men who are married to other people. They're both in loveless marriages, both in a time where divorce was a bad option for many. We want them to be together. We see how happy and free they are when they do get together. Obviously aside from gathering the strength to divorce their spouses and getting together, infidelity is the only option for them TO be together.
and prostitution because they're practical and pragmatic?
You can't get more pragmatic than prostitution. You pay for a specific thing and get it and the other person goes away. No emotional ties, no muss, no fuss.
There are other ways Jack could have obtained relief, known to all gay men, and probably to a lot of straight ones, too.
Well, I'd be interested in hearing what you suggest because if one person is craving the touch of another person of the same sex as a lover, it seems that the only other option IS just more infidelity.
Running up to Wyoming unannounced just because he got word that Ennis's divorce had been finalized is not a very adult course of action.
Adult? Very much so.
Are you deliberately goading me? Running up to Wyoming that way without letting Ennis know he's coming is not the action of a responsible adult. It's the action of an impulsive child.
Why would I do that? It sounds like a man carried away by love. Adults do that all the time. Some do it to surprise their loved ones. You know, fun and romantic? If you don't have a story like this, sure no problem, but that doesn't make people who don't have such stories more 'adult' or 'responsible' than people who do.
