OK. (Jeff takes a deep breath.)
Last time I watched the movie, about a week and a half ago, I had a very weird reaction to the post-divorce scene.
Let me first say that I still remember my reaction to this scene the first time I saw the film in the theater. My reaction wasn't so much to what was happening on the screen to Ennis and Jack. I was very familiar with the story, and I knew immediately that the entire scene had been concocted from one sentence in Annie Proulx:
"He called Jack's number in Childress, something he had done only once before, when Alma divorced him and Jack had misunderstood the reason for the call, had driven twelve hundred miles north for nothing."
And I remember thinking what a brilliant piece of screenwriting that was for Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana to concoct such a gut-wrenching scene out of one little sentence.
Anyway. ...
I know the Standard Received interpretation of what happens in this scene. To what we see on the screen, we have the backing of the stage directions (if that's the right term for it) in the screenplay in
Story to Screenplay:"ENNIS realizes now what has happened: JACK thinks, mistakenly, that ENNIS has come around, that this is their chance, finally, to be together."
Then:
"JACK looks at ENNIS ... and the smile leaves his face, too. Realizes now that he's made a terrible mistake: turns pale ... his body sags under the weight of disappointment. Humiliated, then devastated."
So what happened when I watched the scene?
Without intending it to happen, I found myself watching the scene as if I knew nothing but what I was seeing on the screen. Nothing about the screenplay, nothing about Annie Proulx, just what I was seeing Heath and Jake do on screen--mostly what I was seeing Jake do.
I saw Jack lookin' all perky as he drove up to Wyoming. I saw him get out of the pickup at Ennis's line cabin, all bright-eyed and breathless and repeating himself about getting the postcard. I watched all the famous, lubricious Gyllenhaal lip-licking and tongue action that goes on, and I think, maybe for the first time, I really absorbed Jack's little head-cock--as if to indicate heading off to the mountains.
And I shocked myself by finding myself thinking, "You horny bastard, you're not there to plan a life together, you're just there because you think Ennis's postcard is an invitation to come and get laid!"
That's coarse, I know, and I swear to God I have no idea where that reaction came from, after a year of living intently with this film, these characters. But there it was.
I am sure not out to defend the indefensible, but after the heretical thought about why Jack was there presented itself, I have to admit that Ennis's response, essentially, "I can't go off to the mountains with you, I got my daughters this weekend," seemed more to the point.
And Jack's ultimate response, to go off and, I've always assumed, get fucked in an alley in Juarez (whether or not he paid for it, I don't know), seemed somehow less opprobrious. It even made a kind of perverted sense: You need it (because you can't make it on a couple of high-altitude fucks once or twice a year), you can't get it from Ennis for another month (remember: "See you next month, then"), so you go get it where you can get it.
And, yeah, I'd have been bawling in that pickup, too, as I drove away from Ennis's, if I'd made a fool out of myself as Jack just had. What on earth did he tell Lureen when he left Childress? And what on earth was he going to tell her when he slunk back home with his tail between his legs?
It was weird, I tell you, weird.
Thanks, I really needeg to vent that!
