These guys didn't see any options, other than to suppress their feelings, and do their damndest to BE straight. Homosexuality just wasn't part of the world they knew, Ennis at least didn't know any gay people or anything about gay culture. Maybe he'd heard of gays coming together in San Francisco and campaigning for gay rights, but that was thousands of miles away, in an environment as alien to him as Antarctica, and where he'd have as much chance of fitting in as if he'd gone to stay in an Emperor penguin colony. So, they got married, had kids, tried to live what they'd been told was a normal life and the only respectable way to live. And if they had the occasional weekend together, well, they weren't the only man in town who was cheating on his wife.
And no, these men weren't presented as idealized or heroes, they were presented as people whom fate had given no good options.
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samoanjoes (50963)
4 years ago
But still it's deceitful. These women were with men who didn't want to be with them. Their entire marriages were a lie because their husband were scared of coming out. Let's just say Ennis and Jack were attracted to other women and kept it from their wives because of fear what their wives would think, would that be any different? No one would want to be married to someone who is living a lie but this movie expects us to be okay with it because it's gay cheating instead of straight cheating.
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Otter (24464)
4 years ago
Let's just say I have more sympathy to their situation than you do. I work in the helping professions, and deal with real people who have no good options, and who have to choose between courses of action that will all lead to unhappiness if not disaster. That's how the world IS for some people.
Yes, they were doing wrong by their wives, the best thing I can say is that they made an attempt to do the honorable thing, and BTW they probably knew quite a lot of guys who were worse husbands. Yes, that was a bad option that led to unhappiness for themselves and their wives, but there just weren't any good options. Staying together probably would have resulted in social ostracism or being murdered by their neighbors, going to the city without education or job skills would have meant poverty and alienation, staying bachelors in rural Wyoming would have meant wondering when a longing glance would give them away and the righteous neighbors would get out the tire irons.
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liscarkat (16530)
4 years ago
"I work in the helping professions"
I have never heard anything more self-important and smug.
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Otter (24464)
4 years ago
I've actually been using that phrase for years now, because I've always had a blanket policy of not telling anyone on the late IMDB or current Moviechat boards anything personal about myself - not even what I do for a living. I do that because there are, and always have been, some real nutcases on these boards.
And some real assholes.
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