Topic: ...and sing to me... - possible spoilers

[tpe]

I believe that Heath shows a lot of Ennis' emotions through looks and little smiles...not words, but still there! That "sending up a prayer of thanks" scene is great, and humour does hide his real feelings...but why not saying that he was thankful to be with Jack again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Why God why...everytime, I'm hoping to hear a different answer! :-[

Froggy.  Sometimes, I also get irritated with Ennis' inability to express his feelings out in the open.  He leaves so many important things unsaid.  But that kiss Ennis gave Jack after 4 years -- Jack certainly could not have doubted.  It really speaks louder than words.

Jack appreciated the moment: '...it could be like this...always.'

[*Froggy*]

But that kiss Ennis gave Jack after 4 years -- Jack certainly could not have doubted.  It really speaks louder than words.

That kiss...i could hear Faith Hill singing that Kiss song when reading your reply!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hehehehe!

Anyway, it's four years of frustration! four years of wanting, of unfinished business too...in one long, hard, passionate kiss *sigh*

It could have been like this...but then again it was 1963! :-[

[howardvl]

Then if you remember, when Ennis and Jack meet up again, Ennis asks if Jack feels that people know about him, if people look at him differently. I think it is not only his frustration, it is his paranoia, since he thinks about Jack all the time, he probably thinks that everybody else can see through him!

Froggy, wonderfully put!  I found that Ennis' paranoia was coloring the way he saw the world, and its reaction to him....much like the way depression can color the way people see the world (not that I can vouch for that personally!  )

V

[howardvl]

Aside from those already mentioned, one scene that actually tears many of my friends apart is the one where Ennis and Jack leave for their first 'fishing trip'.  We see Alma carrying Jr. and crying as she sees Ennis, in a cloud of irrepressible happiness, driving away with Jack.

In this scene, one cannot help but feel deeply for Alma's realization that she has 'lost' her husband; but we cannot help but feel elated by the happiness of the lovers.

Thanks tpe....great comments!  I must say after the 2nd viewing, I found my heart reaching out to the wives plight, rather than just Ennis and Jack's drama.  Alma was simply caught up in a bad situation with the best of intentions.....a situation that Ennis himself rightly admits to Jack, when Jack makes a crack about the "life that you and Alma got".

V

[tpe]

I must say after the 2nd viewing, I found my heart reaching out to the wives plight, rather than just Ennis and Jack's drama.  Alma was simply caught up in a bad situation with the best of intentions.....a situation that Ennis himself rightly admits to Jack, when Jack makes a crack about the "life that you and Alma got".

V

Victor, I also can't help feeling that Ennis and Jack are also caught in a situation/state that neither of them can control nore give up entirely.

I myself wonder about Jack's comment about Alma and Ennis having  a life.  I guess one can think of it as stemming from jealousy.  But that comment struck me as a bit too knowing.  I really was not prepared for it the first time. 

Incidentally, this entire exchange originally was part of the 'Motel Siesta' scene, and I believe its transfer from the motel scene to the first 'fishing trip' did not make Proulx happy at the start, when she first got wind of the change.  She later admitted that she was wrong and that the change worked on film. 

[*Froggy*]

Incidentally, this entire exchange originally was part of the 'Motel Siesta' scene, and I believe its transfer from the motel scene to the first 'fishing trip' did not make Proulx happy at the start, when she first got wind of the change.  She later admitted that she was wrong and that the change worked on film. 

Wow i did not know that..thankx for sharing 

[tpe]

[Wow i did not know that..thankx for sharing 

You're welcome, Froggy.

For those who have not read the story, I'm appending here the relevant passages from the Motel Siesta scene inthe original story that got moved to the first fishing trip.  I got his from the online site posted by Froggy: http://pviktor.co.uk/p_viktor_/files/brokeback_mountain.pdf


*************************************************************************************


"You won't catch me again," said Jack. "Listen. I'm thinkin, tell you what, if you and me had a little ranch together, little cow and calf operation, your horses, it'd be some sweet life. Like I said, I'm gettin out a rodeo. I ain't no broke-dick rider but I don't got the bucks a ride out this slump I'm in and I don't got the bones a keep gettin wrecked. I got it figured, got this plan, Ennis, how we can do it, you and me. Lureen's old man, you bet he'd give me a bunch if I'd get lost. Already more or less said it -- "

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. It ain't goin a be that way. We can't. I'm stuck with what I got, caught in my own loop. Can't get out of it. Jack, I don't want a be like them guys you see around sometimes. And I don't want a be dead. There was these two old guys ranched together down home, Earl and Rich -- Dad would pass a remark when he seen them. They was a joke even though they was pretty tough old birds. I was what, nine years old and they found Earl dead in a irrigation ditch. They'd took a tire iron to him, spurred him up, drug him around by his d**k until it pulled off, just bloody pulp. What the tire iron done looked like pieces a burned tomatoes all over him, nose tore down from skiddin on gravel."

"You seen that?"

"Dad made sure I seen it. Took me to see it. Me and K.E. Dad laughed about it. Hell, for all I know he done the job. If he was alive and was to put his head in that door right now you bet he'd go get his tire iron. Two guys livin together? No. All I can see is we get together once in a while way the hell out in the back a nowhere -- "

"How much is once in a while?" said Jack. "Once in a while ever four fu**in years?"

"No," said Ennis, forbearing to ask whose fault that was. "I goddamn hate it that you're goin a drive away in the mornin and I'm goin back to work. But if you can't fix it you got a stand it," he said. "Shit. I been lookin at people on the street. This happen a other people? What the hell do they do?"

"It don't happen in Wyomin and if it does I don't know what they do, maybe go to Denver," said Jack, sitting up, turning away from him, "and I don't give a flyin f***. Son of a bitch, Ennis, take a couple days off. Right now. Get us out a here. Throw your stuff in the back a my truck and let's get up in the mountains. Couple a days. Call Alma up and tell her you're goin. Come on, Ennis, you just shot my airplane out a the sky -- give me somethin a go on. This ain't no little thing that's happenin here."

The hollow ringing began again in the next room, and as if he were answering it, Ennis picked up the phone on the bedside table, dialed his own number.


*************************************************************************************

[welshwitch]

I watched the whole thing again today - must be for the twelfth time, but from the first time that flashback, specailly the part where Ennis stands behind Jack with his arms round him, made me think of Milton's " Calm of mind, all passion spent". They look entirely at ease together, relaxed and as though they've just shared something beautiful. I find that last line "See you in the morning" almost unwatchably sad, because there won't ever be another morning for them after Ennis drives away. And waking up next to someone after a night together is somehow more intimate than sex, specially the sort of sex where you have to rush off afterwards because you should never have been there in the first place. So this scene to me says that they're committed and this isn't just sexual and transitory.
However, the short story presents it differently and says that though Jack remembered this moment as the one uncomplicatedly happy time they'd known, nevertheless he thought Ennis had held him from behind because he didnlt want to see nor feel it was Jack he held  Iin other words he realised even then that Ennis couldn't acknowledge the nature of his feelings or relationship with Jack.

[shieldmaid]

The poignancy of this scene is underlined by the fact, I think, that we also see Ennis playing the protector to Jack (as people have pointed out elsewhere, he often does this).  Thus he shares some family history with him, holds him, urges him to sleep (i.e., take care of himself), and reassures him about their future contact.  So while it is unbearably painful to realize that they won't be together again, we also see the many needs Jack had--for a real family, for instance--that Ennis did in a small way fulfill. 

[tpe]

There is something about a lullaby that is timeless and most sacred.  The tradition since time immemorial  has been between mother and child.  Very rarely has it been used in the context of star-crossed lovers.

Ennis's lullaby is at the center of this scene, which is at the center of the entire film.  It is the heart of hearts -- center of centers -- core of cores.  As the Poet Rilke had envisioned:

Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet--
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,

a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.
.

Truly -- most truly -- their love shall endure (even if only in most tenuous memory): until all the stars are dead.


 
 

[proulxfan]

welshwitch,shieldmaid, tpe:

This "triptych" of posts is perhaps the most beautiful expression of this incredibly beautiful scene/passage that I have yet seen on this forum. Bless you and thank you for sharing this.
david

[edgar]

Hush a-bye, don't you cry;
Go to sleepy little baby.
When you wake, you shall have
All the pretty little horses.
Blacks and bays, dapples and grays;
All the pretty little horses
Blacks and bays, dapples and grays;
Coach and six-a little horses.
Hush a-bye, don't you cry;
Go to sleepy little baby.
When you wake, you'll have sweet cake,
And all the pretty little horses.
A brown and gray,
A black and bay,
Coach and six-a little horses
A black and bay,
A brown and a gray,
Coach and six-a little horses....

[tpe]

Thanks david and edgar.

I have always wondered what forgotten song Ennis must have sung. 

The fact that we shall never know moves me so.