I am just wondering if Jack was murdered because of his sexuality or was it really an accident. Did Jack purposely put himself in harms way to be killed. Also, didn't Ennis say he would kill Jack if he found out any more things about him, like the guy in Mexico. As mentioned in other comments, it was so hard to hear what Ennis is saying half the time.
shareIt's left up to the viewer to decide.
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4) You ever seen Superman $#$# his pants? Case closed.
Read a bunch of prior comments on the same question:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0388795/board/nest/251611936
..*.. TxMike ..*..
Take a risk, Take a chance, Make a change. Kelly Clarkson - Breakaway
The book refers to it as an "accident". But whether Annie Proule was being straight with us or ironic is up for interpretation.
In the end it's up to you to decide for yourself.
I am just wondering if Jack was murdered because of his sexuality or was it really an accident.The movie never provides a definite answer to this. the viewer has no way of knowing whether the image of the attack that Ennis imagines in his head is close to the truth of what happened, or if the story that Lureen tells about the tire accidentally is the truth. Interestingly, the actors had no idea what the truth was either:
GROSS:
. . .
In that scene, as you are explaining how Jack died, we're seeing, for a few seconds, another story. You're saying he died while fixing a flat, and what we're seeing is him being the victim of a gay-bashing, where he's beaten to death.
HATHAWAY: Yes.
GROSS: And it's very ambiguous in the movie. What are we seeing? Are we seeing what you know to be the truth of what happened, but you don't want to go to that truth? Are we seeing what Heath Ledger's character is imagining what happened? What are we seeing? Do you know?
HATHAWAY: I don't. I don't know. I never asked Ang. I played it both ways, and those takes got merged in the final film. So I don't actually know.
GROSS: What do you mean you played it both ways?
HATHAWAY: I played it as though I knew what was going on with Jake's character Jack and that he'd been cheating on me with men and that I knew about the gay bashing. And I also played it as though I had no idea that this is how my husband died. You know, it was a terrible accident with a car tire. So actually, I don't really know which one wound up in the film.
GROSS: Now, does it bother you that you didn't know? Do you think, like, you ought to know, like, what your character knows?
HATHAWAY: No. Well, I did know within each take. But I'm an actor who believes that film is a director's medium. And I got along so well with Ang Lee I think partially because I showed up and I said: What color do you need me to be today in your painting? I mean, I was so happy to serve him and his story and his vision. So I just, I would just do anything he told me to do.
So Ang knows the truth in his head, and it's not important to me. I actually think I get to be a part of the film as an audience member because I don't know, because I think the ambiguity is what is the strength of that scene and what's heartbreaking about it.
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=131566903
But I'm an actor who believes that film is a director's medium.
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Unfortunately America does not think that way and assumes the actors must know what is going on in director's head.
Worst example is the boys from 2001 ASO being interviewed 40 years down the line to find "the truth" behind Kubrick's thinking.
The characters themselves were in the dark [as well as Clarke of course] as only HAL knew the details so what chance the actors would be in Kubrick's confidence [which he NEVER gave to anyone].
http://www.kindleflippages.com/ablog/
Jack died?? Damn, what's next?
..*.. TxMike ..*..
Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes not. On Brokeback Mountain we are never alone!
Spoiler alert.
When I first saw the film (at the theater when it was first run,) I felt the same thing. The ambivalence involved.
I just watched the film on TV just now, and I was paying close attention to Lureen's demeanor to see if I could see if she was holding back the truth or was telling the truth.
Clearly, she has no affection for Ennis, so she "knows the score" on Jack and Ennis' relationship, even if it is a nebulous thing in her mind. I think she would have seen how Jack felt about Ennis countless times, because Jack was more open, and his affection for Ennis would have shown, and I can imagine a nasty scene between Lureen and Jack where he just lays it all out for her. I can see her not wanting a divorce because of that, but I'm speculating here.
All along in the years since I first saw it and on re-watching it, more than once, I began to think that the scene shown as Lureen explains to Ennis what happened-- where Jack is gay-bashed-- are just Ennis inner world encroaching. Remember, his father forced him and hid brother to look at the murdered gay rancher and to my mind, is a major reason Ennis is so conflicted: being with other men = death.
I think he was just projecting his own fears. He knows Jack is a bit wild, what with the Mexico side street meetings, and how Jack is so up front about the two of them ranching together and so on, so he thinks, "See Jack, this is what happens when you let "this thing" "get ahold of us" at "the wrong time."
I can't think of a reason she would purposefully tell a false story to Ennis of all people. Again, I think she new the score, as depicted in her coldness to Jack's (assumed) best friend. I also don't think that she was told a false story by anyone to save her feelings, but I could see that happening. People nt knowing that she knew of her husband's real relationship to Jack.
I'm not saying this to convince anyone that it is the "correct" interpretation of the scene, just sharing my take on it. To each his own interpretation, and that may be the director's intention.
Awesome post
i agree that he was projecting his own fears, and he knew Jack was more open (seeing men in Mexico and so on) and was scared that this man he loved died the way he so feared would happen to one or both of them if they ever tried to live together.
I think it's ultimately up to the viewer. And Ang Lee left us to interpret it the way we "want."
" . . . even if it is a nebulous thing in her mind"
Thank-you for commenting and because of what you said, I re-read the story and re-watched the movie. Yes, I agree-- those were some ferocious wigs they put on Hathaway especially that dried-out blond thing-- whew!
Is it unnecessary to "spoiler alert" this at this point? :-D
The part you wrote about "how could these guys think they could get away with it" struck me this watching in Thanksgiving scene and the scene soon after that where Ennis and Jack visit BM for the last time.
At the end of the Thanksgiving dinner, in the kitchen over the dishes, you'll recall that Alma reveals to Ennis that she knew that Ennis never fished at BM because of the note she left on his rod and reel-- "after five years this thing never touched water"-- and the note was still there when he returned saying he had caught fish but ate them on BM.
[In the several "rendevous" scenes, I couldn't really say how many times they were on or around BM-- if they were, all those times-- they weren't up where they had shepherded before, it looked to me.]
Interestingly, in spite of being in the mood to *coff-coff* "clear a few things up" while doing the dishes, Alma doesn't go on to tell Ennis that she actually knew about him and Jack even before that-- when she caught them sucking face by the stairway when Jack comes to visit Ennis after the four-year nothingness following their Brokeback summer. It also struck me about that first reunion, that when Ennis comes back in to say he and Jack are off to get drunk, she was apparently packing her purse to head out herself-- not for the cigarettes she starts to ask Ennis to get her-- but for her sister's house or somewhere-- anywhere the two of them aren't.
But then, right after that at BM, Ennis asks Jack how things are with Lureen and does he think she ever suspected anything and then he asks if Jack ever felt that everybody knew about him by the way they looked at him in the street-- and it suddenly dawned on me that Alma's revelation--- that she had kept secret for so long-- that she knew what he and "Jack Nasty" had been up to for years-- that revelation had sent Ennis into a little paranoid crisis. He had never suspected he wasn't getting away with it and then he sees that he really hadn't been getting away with anything all along. It shocked him right out of that dreamworld.
And I guess it might have dawned on him even earlier than that if Jack had told him that the foreman had seen them playing around back on BM.
I also noticed that before this viewing, I had never wondered what happened to the murdered man's partner back when Ennis was nine.... I guess we're supposed to think that he ran off to save his own skin, maybe? I imagine that today, he might have gotten a gun and tried to even up the score, even killing Ennis' dad whom Ennis says he doesn't know that he wasn't a part of it himself.
Sorry, to have run on so long.
I'm done for now. :-)
those were some ferocious wigs they put on Hathaway especially that dried-out blond thing
I think part of the "general nebulousness" comes from Ennis' character and the way he never said much as his natural way. The waitress he dated for a time even says of her new fella "He even talks." Ennis helped build his own prison of loneliness by never learning to talk about the things he was going through. He didn't share anything more about why he wondered if Alma suspected anything about Jack. And Jack, respecting (if that's the word) Ennis' solitude doesn't go on with the conversation-- strange in a way since Jack seems to be a little sensitive to "mood". But if you try to force someone to "open up", they just get annoyed as hell and shut you out even more.
So, as in the short story, Ang left Ennis true to himself, and I am so glad there wasn't a lot of dialogue added to make him into someone he isn't. Same with other characters not doing a lot of "chatting" with each other. Drawing on my own experience with people, it seems a lot goes unsaid all the time. We just let things go, maybe too easily, but we think about them ever after a lot.
Ennis' tormenting loneliness brought me to tears at least twice. First, when he snuggles into Jack on their "second time" and then again-- and I was bawling-- when he breaks down completely at their last meeting. It reminded me of the song "Desperado": "You prison is walking through this world all alone". Jack was Ennis' relief from that past loneliness.
Then there's the joke country song that goes "If You Won't Leave Me Alone, I'll Find Somebody Who Will." which reminds me of Lurleen Lumpkin. What a star!
PS: That boy that was murdered in Wyoming was named Matthew Shepard. Yes. Shepard........ Interestingly, Proulx's story was published nearly an exact year before the murder. BM was published on Oct. 13, 1997, Matthew was beaten on Oct. 6, 1998 and he died on Oct. 12.
Ennis' character and the way he never said much as his natural way
Oh, yeah-- those lines of Ennis' at that moment. Whew. That's what did it for me, too.
I think we can say that some of Ennis' reluctance to emotionally bond is due to his getting kicked out of the house when his brother got married? That old fear of abandonment thing. If you don't risk it happening again, it won't happen again. It would seem to make all his relationships not coming about without an expiration date hidden somewhere.
But Ennis doesn't seem to make anything of it as he lists off his past details. It was just something else on the timeline, nothing special. We could get waist-deep in this and risk over-analyzing Jack and Ennis, but it would make sense.
There's a part of Jack's grim background left out of the film. It explains a lot about his relationship with his father. It would have clouded the whole mood and intent of the "Ennis visits Jack's folks" scene if Ang had inserted it there, although that is where Proulx places it in her story. It could have gone over well during one of the boys' excursions, over a campfire whisky. It would have been a balancing backstory of Jack, filling him out as the corpse-viewing scene did for Ennis, but I mostly got in Jack's expositions is that Jack's dad didn't care for his rodeoing-- not much else there, thank-you. I don't know why Ang didn't include it. I'd like to know why.
I found a PDF copy of Proulx's story online somewhere and it is well worth a read. It's not intended to be a point in the story, but Ennis comes away with his and Jack's shirts without Mrs. Twist's involvement-- right-out took'em from under their noses, he did. LOL. I like the film version where Mrs. Twist gives Ennis a sad, knowng smile and puts the shirts in a brown paper bag. Heart, heart, heart right? It makes me think that she was quite a wise woman (wasted on her churlish hubby)and knew Jack loved Ennis in a "special" way that she knows happens.
"How did these guys think they could get away with it,"
Would it have ended sooner, if Ennis was seeing a woman (or several)?
Do you mean Alma would stop it sooner, without the shame?
Or are affairs between men and women more condoned in rural areas?
If anyone watches this thinking, "How did these guys think they could get away with it," that "nebulous concept" theory goes a long way in explaining how they got away with it at that time.
OK, pardon. I read "get away with it" as in breaking rules.
For the rules beholden to marriage, I thought rdjenkins-4's "nebulous" referred to Laureen's wifely intuitions. It could be any amount of denial, rationalizing, or tolerating Jack, as long as they keep a facade.
(eg. don't "flaunt" as some kind of "respect" for her; though by the tavern they both knew the score. Staying together was easier than the mess of splitting their joint interests. An inertia common in many marriages. It's perfectly in line with Lee's early work, of a person suppressing their personal desires and wishes, to serve a "greater good" of family and society. Live in quiet desperation, within one's duty.)
For the rules beholden to a region's mores and ethics, your idea of "nebulous" is about how much or well homosexual behavior blends into heterosexual activities. Right? And its absence in public awareness is by the very real presence of fear, hatred, disgust, and violence - shall the behaviors NOT blend well enough.
So it's about logistics. Much of the furor upon this movie's release, was the timeless pasttimes like fishing and camping -- for men to "be men" away from the burdens of family life -- took on a homoerotic identity presented as even more emotionally profound, as very brief moments of being free from a restrictive society. This made for constant source of amusement and jokes, for people to reconcile what's been derided, feared or downright loathed, not just as its own Eden for the socially reviled, but that which overlaps with the much less oppressed heterosexual men who are simply getting away from nagging wives and crying babies. Boys time.
This forced an uncomfortable closing of the gap, for the in-group to relate to the out-group, by sharing very different meanings of the same activities passed down through generations. Suddenly men camping and fishing together, can take a Brokeback joke, like some stop-gap hold-off from bashing a guy's head in next time, if you *thought* he may have shot you a glance that's "funny".
Then you have the ambiguity inherent in the tradition of men getting to "be men", away from their wives. It allows ac amount of emotional distance (not quite cheating or "emotional affairs", though some wives joke about being left out of the strong camaraderie of in-jokes and exclusive experiences among their husbands and friends.) This is what Alma and Laureen contend with: their lower social status, is in some ambiguous position relative to men who won't be exiled to lower status as long as they're deemed heterosexual (enough.) Both clung onto each other as long as it suited them.
As per your use of "reckless" and "control": These two had enough "male privilege" in the in-groups of their regions, to "blend in" without restricted movement (trucks; itinerant jobs), being monitored (didn't some "oral history" books of actual ~farmhands say there wasn't much surveillance on solitary jobs, already short on manpower?) If they can move around (more than house-bound wives), and not get under much surveillance (of watchful eyes in motels, mountains; of sex tourism; of growing tolerance over time - like meeting Randall on couples night, vs. earlier "cruising" at a bar), it's hard for moral outrage to intervene effectively and timely in the form of vigilante "justice".
Then you have self-censoring or repression (Ennis), and evasive conversations (rural laborer or business owners don't do talkative marriages.) That's the funny thing about different kinds of isolation: your spirits may be drained, you're also left alone enough to be protected from the slowness of "progress", from many others having to change their minds and ways to accept you in their midst (again, if you don't "flaunt" or look visibly too different - like skin color.)
As Jack is the favorite anti-example of keeping one's well-being within a group's strict ethics and guidelines, there are still several scenarios to justify his death, if the movie's primary interest is a detailed portrait of Ennis living every sinew of his traumatic fear. What ironic resemblance of this curdling of all that's free and alive in him, to the much admired classic masculine ideal. Endure all of life's hardships and sorrows to the bitter end - with a stoic demeanor. That's the best kind of getting away when you're different - blend into one of the oldest ideals.
You know, the vibe I got was that Jack was murdered. I think there is a good chance that his wife was loosely involved or at least knew the actual details of it, other than what she relayed to Ennis.
I think the Anna Farris' characters husband lured Jack out to somewhere, and ambushed him with the group and killed him.
I am not sure Ennis really envisioned the truth of the murder as we the audience see it. I think we are secretly shown the truth of the situation behind Jacks wifes story, as it's being told.
I think Jacks parents even met his killer, and didn't know it, as we later learn of Jack bringing another man to meet them.
Ana faris's husband was just another closeted cowboy, and it's revealed at the end by the dad they had been seeing each other and jack had plans of moving in together just like he did with Enis in the past, so him being behind jack's murder seems very unlikely and out of character to me.
I do believe what we see is what Enis imagined, otherwise the scene at the beginning of Enis, his dad and the corpse of the gay neighbor makes no sense, however, I also believe Laureen is not saying the truth.
Previously known as college dropout kid.
I read the short story today and there is a line where Ennis believed it was the tire iron.
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