MovieChat Forums > Brokeback Mountain (2006) Discussion > Question about the phone call between Lu...

Question about the phone call between Lureen and Ennis (spoliers)

posted 8 years ago by punkgirly
19 replies | jump to latest

Near the end, Ennis and Lureen are on the phone and she tells Ennis that Jack was killed on the road when he was changing a tire and he was run over, or something like that.

As she's telling Ennis this, we see images of Jack being beaten to death for being gay.

My question is, does Lureen really know that that's what happened (the truth) and to cover it up (not wanting to tell everyone her husband was gay) she makes up a story about Jack being run over?

OR....

Does she NOT know what happened and as Lureen tells Ennis this (maybe what the police told her they thought had happened?), he knows exactly what happened? Like, the images of Jack are what Ennis pictures in his head as the truth?

So basically, is Lureen totally innocent and just retelling what the police told her, or does she known darn well it was a gay beating and she made up a story?

Thanks!

[–] samrim1030 8 years ago

Hi punkgirly,

This debate has been going on for ten years now, and the response is mixed.

My take on it is that Ennis remembers, as a little boy, being shown what happens to 'queers', by his cruel dad, and this makes him imagine Jack's death by gay bashers. Remember the story is set in the 1960's when homosexuality was still illegal in most western countries too.

The debate seems evenly divided between that scenario and the accidental death alternative.

The director of the film, Ang Lee wanted the viewer to choose, and deliberately left the end ambiguous. I prefer the accident option, but know it's as hard to prove as the other.

I guess the film ends, with Ennis alone because he didn't DARE go with Jack, and that's the whole point of the story.

Hearing how unforgiving some societies around the world are to gay people, it's easy to imagine how frightened Ennis was to 'come out'. The western world has moved on but many other areas still regard the very idea of homosexuality as abhorrent and a threat, so there's a long way to go. The Pride celebration in London last weekend was/is great, but make no mistake, gays in Muslim countries particularly, and others, have still no more than a vague hope of understanding, acceptance, or at least tolerance.

Best Wishes

Sam

"Jack leaned against the steady heartbeat"

[–] punkgirly 8 years ago

Hi Sam,

All sounds great, and I get that viewers are split about whether it really happened (Jack getting beaten for being gay--a hate crime).

What I'd like to know is, did Lureen find out the truth but it was too painful/embarrassing for her to tell everyone so she made up a story that Jack got run over?

Or was Lureen totally naive and just repeated what cops told her, but when she tells it to Ennis, he immediately knows that it was a gay bashing?

I do remember that flashback scene when Ennis was a boy and saw what happened to "queers."

I just want to know if Lureen couldn't bring herself to tell everyone the truth. I feel like she'd want to hide it and make up a story, not knowing that Ennis would figure out the truth.

[–] TxMike 8 years ago

Being a fictional story with fictional characters we can never know the answers to your questions. If it isn't specifically covered, in some fashion, in the movie then it didn't happen. So each of us is left to latch onto whichever interpretation we choose. Nothing more.

..*.. TxMike ..*..
Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes not. In a tent with Jack I could never be alone.

[–] Rontrigger 8 years ago

Whether the accident story--that the tire rim exploded while Jack was pumping up a flat--was true or not, people in Childress, Texas, would have accepted the story without questioning it. Such accidents are known to happen with massive truck tires (they're usually changed in garages fitted with special cages), and both original author Annie Proulx and co-screenwriter Larry McMurtry (who have lived in rural/small-town areas) vouched for this.

If it was a gay-bashing, then the authorities could well have kept the truth from Lureen, to save one of the local prominent ladies embarrassment. Or it's possible that they would have told her the truth, but suggested the tire-rim story as a cover--or she might have come up with that idea herself.

One thing to consider is this: by the time Ennis called Lureen, Jack had been dead for some time. Lureen would have told the same story (true or not) over and over again to many people, so by the time Ennis heard it she would sound like she was reciting the story robotically, by rote.

She does seem to realize during the course of the phone call the significance of Ennis in Jack's life. Hearing that they herded sheep on Brokeback Mountain seems to trigger a revelation in her mind.

As with so many things in this film, each viewer's own conclusion can be perfectly correct--whatever works for you.

"You can't have Ennis without Jack."--Annie Proulx

[–] Phydeaux50 8 years ago

Iirc, the colour palette from the point of Ennis receiving the postcard marked deceased is washed out, as if all the bright colour of Ennis' world has drained away. Lureen has gone blonde and is talking on a white phone sat on a white table, which is conspicuously in shot.

Given that the creative decisions were not made on a whim, she appears to have 'divorced' her prior identity, looking very different- even as different as possible- from the last time we see her.

The washed out colour palette, I think, is a creative reflection of Ennis' psyche after receiving the news about Jack.

In the final scene, Ennis is in a battered washed-out white-tones caravan. His mailbox flag shows no mail.

Inside, the colours are faded, particularly the colours of his shirts in his closet. He opens the closet door to reveal his and Jack's shirt hung together.

In the right third of the screen is the window, a brightly lit field in the distance, the foreground in shadow. He swears (imo) his regret for lost love and what might have been if only...

The door closes and the field is held for a few seconds, perhaps bright hope in the distance but still plenty of shadow framed by washed out colours.

🇦🇺 All the little devils are proud of Hell.

[–] 8 years ago

[deleted]

[–] toycoon-too 8 years ago

I remember reading somewhere that Ang Lee directed Anne Hathaway to read the lines as though she knew the truth AND as though she was repeating the fabricated story. She said that to this day, he never told her which take he used in the film or if it was a combination of both. Pretty effective, huh?

[–] AndrewGS 7 years ago

My question is, does Lureen really know that that's what happened (the truth) and to cover it up (not wanting to tell everyone her husband was gay) she makes up a story about Jack being run over?

OR....

Does she NOT know what happened and as Lureen tells Ennis this (maybe what the police told her they thought had happened?), he knows exactly what happened? Like, the images of Jack are what Ennis pictures in his head as the truth?

So basically, is Lureen totally innocent and just retelling what the police told her, or does she known darn well it was a gay beating and she made up a story?

As I interpreted the the scene, she seems to have at some recent time realized Jack was gay or bisexual and was bitter, at least that it led to him being killed, and also probably thought Ennis was his main partner and disliked him and tried to diminish their relationship.

[–] punkgirly 7 years ago

So are you saying that Lureen DID know how and why Jack was killed and she made up a story so as not to humiliate herself, or did she think he was killed by the car?

[–] AndrewGS 7 years ago

I think it's more likely she knew he was killed deliberately because he was gay rather than in an accident and made up the story to taunt Ennis, refusing to admit to Ennis she knew the truth.

[–] Phydeaux50 7 years ago

Do you think she realised the depth of E and J's relationship? Consider that, if your take is the way it was, she would have been admitting a murder that was covered up, and she herself implicated at-the-least as an accessory after the fact for covering it up.

🇦🇺 All the little devils are proud of Hell.

[–] dnitzer-465-412648 7 years ago

The phone call is the first time Lureen has had any contact with a mysterious man whom she's never met, named Ennis, whom her husband runs off with regularly to go fishing or hunting or whatever it is they do. He has never come to visit them, it's always that Jack visits Ennis, but it's never reciprocated, even though she has asked her husband why he never comes to visit. She knows something isn't quite right about her marriage, but she doesn't know what. After all, if Jack can tell Ennis that he could conduct his marriage to Lureen over the phone, Lureen probably feels the same sense of estrangement too.

What else does Lureen know about her husband? Jack has some mystery place in his imagination called Brokeback Mountain, that's his favorite place, so much so that that's where he wants his ashes to be scattered. She's not even sure if it's a real place or not, but whatever it is, it's deeply meaningful to Jack.

Her husband is found dead on the side of the road. Maybe from an accident, but the tire story is kinda flimsy, isn't it? An experienced ranch hand has a tire explode in his face and he bleeds to death... Really? How often does that happen? It's a convenient story rather than have the truth be told, the police likely looked the other way, and Lureen goes along with it to avoid the public embarrassment of having been married to a gay man. Everybody keeps hush-hush, a gentleman's agreement, and nobody is scandalized.

Now out of the blue some months later, she gets a phone call from the man she's never met, Ennis del Mar. All she knows so far is that this is Jack's fishing buddy. When Ennis asks her what happened, she says, "Oh yeah..." (he hasn't heard yet) and she has to tell that story again.

Then she learns from Ennis that Brokeback Mountain isn't imaginary, it's a real place, it's where Jack and Ennis met. Click. Lureen puts the pieces together while Ennis is telling her about Brokeback Mountain - and you can see it in her expression - "so that's why Jack always said it was his favorite place." Listen to her pained groan at that moment; she has just figured it out, and she is speaking to her rival, the person who had been her husband's one true love, knowing that she is not telling the truth about how he died.

Imagine the flood of emotions for her at that moment - anger, hurt, guilt, sadness, pain, pity, jealousy. I don't know that she's trying to diminish their relationship so much as that she's trying to grasp the totality of it.

[–] AndrewGS 7 years ago

But why would she actually think Brokeback Mountain was an imaginary place rather than a real place? That felt like a spiteful comment, trying to emphasize that Ennis maybe hadn't really meant much to Jack, more than a sincere one.

[–] dnitzer-465-412648 7 years ago

She would think Brokeback Mountain was an imaginary place because she had never been there, Jack had never taken her along on his trips, and it's just another one of Jack's stories or tall-tales, like his plans that never came to fruition. I doubt that she realized Ennis and Jack were lovers, and I don't think she meant to dismiss Ennis; it's more that she didn't know him other than he and Jack were friends, and she had no way to get in touch with him.

She might have suspected or heard rumors that Jack and Randall were fooling around behind her back, and the tire story was a cover up to save face.

So when Ennis explains that BBM is a real place, now she understands why it meant so much to Jack and why this Ennis person was so important to him. Alma had her "Ah ha!" moment when she looked out the door and saw them kissing in the stairwell. This is Lureen's "Ah ha!" moment. You hear it in her gasps as she realizes who this Ennis person really is. That had to cut through her like a knife. I take her little gasps to be both a sting of pain for her, and a bit of sympathy for Ennis. She wouldn't want to meet her dead husband's lover - who would want to do that? - but she did at least suggest Ennis do a kindly thing and visit Jack's parents, believing they would appreciate Ennis carrying out Jack's wishes. She didn't fly into a rage or get angry; she wasn't openly hostile like Jack's father; I think the phone call rekindled her pain and also let her feel Ennis' pain at the same time.

[–] dnitzer-465-412648 7 years ago

One last point about this: Anne Hathaway has said that Ang Lee asked her to do the scene two different ways, first as if she knew about Jack and Ennis, and then again as if she did not know about them. Why would he want two different reactions to the same scene? So that he could splice the two versions together and show us Lureen's behavior before she figured out about Jack and Ennis, and then after she figured it out.

She's rather distant at first and even has to ask Ennis twice who he is before she remembers, "oh, yeah, you're the fishing buddy." Now Lureen has to try to remember the story, one she probably hasn't had to tell for a while now, but Ennis hasn't heard it yet. ("oh, yeah..."). For all she knows, Ennis might be just as shocked as she had been, to hear that his fishing buddy was gay. She doesn't know much about Ennis; she's never met him. So she thinks she just needs to repeat the 'official' story, and she's done it enough times that she can do it by rote, and without emotion.

When does she show genuine emotion? After Ennis explains to her that BBM is a real place. She struggles to hold it back, but it slips out in those little gasps and the watery eyes. This is the moment when she figured it out.

[–] Frank_Z 7 years ago

but the tire story is kinda flimsy, isn't it?

Not at all. As has been repeatedly explained over the past decade on this discussion board, it was a real thing that happened often enough that Lureen's story would not sound suspicious to any of the locals.

[–] dnitzer-465-412648 7 years ago

Got it. My real point was that the tire story was a convenient "cover" for what actually happened. So it makes sense as a believable cover story if it was a common enough occurrence.

[–] samrim1030 7 years ago

Hi,

We are meant to draw our own conclusion upon what killed Jack. the tyre accident just as likely as the gay bashing. Both scenarios are equally possible, neither, a 'cover' story. Director, writers, script writers, actors have all said this over the eleven years since the film came out. You choose!

Best Wishes

Sam

"Jack leaned against the steady heartbeat"

[–] Bolchevik (369) 3 years ago

I think the movie was leaning over a beating since it was made clear Jack wasn't being careful.

As for her wife, even if she knew (and I think she knew) there is no way she would tell he was beatean to death. Can you imagine she knew and would say "oh Jack was gay and got beaten to death" in '60 Texas ?