...and now for something almost completely different:
Part 1. Ennis and Jack, the Yin and the Yang, Caution and Abandon.
Jack is always “trying” so hard because he doesn't have the patience or maturity to take responsibility for reaching solutions. As Mr. Gyllenhall has said, just the “trying” to get it right is all he can manage. (This may be one of the soul-scars left by Papa Twist, but Ennis is so in love with this “lovable loser” trait he sees it as "endearing," and it actually is a part of Jack's charm for him. Jack may have loved “a little dog,” but Ennis loves Jack, likewise.) Just as he shoots at the coyote without breathing or aiming properly, Jack habitually acts before really being ready to do the task: shooting the coyote, and missing for lack of preparing for the shot; “I can use a can opener,” and he spills the beans (!); bitchin’ at Ennis for being late with the supplies before he discovers that Ennis opened a head wound in a fall from the horse; blows up at LD on Thanksgiving – not saying LD didn’t deserve it all right, but still, Jack let fly with a few years of frustration all at that one moment, just like he fires his entire ar**nal at Ennis in the final fight. Jack's personal history is one of precipitous actions, taken without preparation, before all the facts are considered.
Part 2: The portrayal of the change in Jack’s thinking.
For the longest time I couldn't understand the camera moves during Ennis's initial pleadings to Jack to understand (those aren't excuses - they're real, they're reasons): at first Ennis is behind Jack's head, the he appears to the left of Jack (over Jack's right shoulder), in sharp focus. By the time he gets to Don Wroe’s cabin,” He's headed back behind Jack's head, then out the other side, seen over Jack's left shoulder. Then he goes back, blocked out by jack's head, and something happens: The focus shifts from Ennis to Jack, who’s shaking before he speaks, saying, “Never enough time, never enough.”
Part 3: The Sobering Moment.
I think we are witnessing Jack decide to tell Ennis everything that's been on his mind for 20 yrs. In warm-up to the grand bitch-out, Jack offers no help, no alternative and even seems to encourage the pent-up venom generated by 16 years of hard-packed frustration to explode all over Ennis. He unreasonably places the entire burden of his problem on Ennis, as if his happiness were Ennis's responsibility. As easily as Ennis could give up his fear of getting them killed, Jack could come up with a compromise - we are not shown that he even tried. When he finally notices the anguish he’s caused Ennis, and finally can spare a thought for the man he loves, he puts the brakes on himself, stopping his horrendous tirade. He knows how thoroughly hateful that he’s being because his intention is for these words to hurt, not to introduce or enhance a satisfactory resolution to his complaints. Only when Ennis collapses does he recognize his incredibly striking progress towards the total demolition of the one he loves, and the drowsy embrace pops full-blown into his mind. This is Jack, finally realizing that Ennis has loved him all along.
Part 4: Good Reasons.
And this is what all the yelling and whining and cheating is actually all about. The real result of the aching loneliness "inspired" by Papa Twist is Jack's biggest problem: "I need to be loved, all day long, every day, I need to know. Reassure me." In the midst of the fight, he remembers the long warm drowsy embrace, finally realizing that he’s had all along that “thing” he wanted most – by any other name, it is still love from Ennis.
Just as everyone in the world knows Ennis is clueless about naming the “feeling,” the “thing” which makes the fishin’ trips irresistible to him, most don’t see that Jack, although an aggressive charmer, is equally clueless, and so it is, in this moment of utmost stress, he finally comes to the accurate conclusion that almost everything Ennis has done since they met has been to be with him, to comfort and protect him from the outrages of a hostile world. It takes remembering the drowsy embrace of 20 yrs prior during a highly emotional crisis for him to actually remember the DE not only for his original negative assumptions about it (what it is not – not face to face, etc.) but for what it accurately is: it is Ennis, nonverbally (as usual) speaking (and maybe even speaking beyond his capacity to comprehend thoroughly his own message - people do that, and Ennis is surely a person most likely to do that), saying I love you.
Part 5: A realistic alternative conclusion.
As Ennis collapses, Jack ultimately and decisively remembers the DE as it really was: it was everything he wanted and his own anxiety prevented him from seeing. It was simply Ennis, unconcerned with anything but Jack, there just to hold him. Jack's "Eureka!" moment, he sees the break in the prince’s armor where the love has been showing all along! He had feelings for me way back then! He has feelings for me now! He loves me! The bastard lied, he isn’t straight. It took me f*ckin’ long enough to get it. Ah, sweet Jesus, I love him, what have I done to him, to us? (Maybe this is something of what is behind the look on Jack's face as Ennis’s truck is going away.)
