Topic: Flashback scene - spoiler

[welshwitch]

It also underlines the earlier phrase "It could be like this, just like this, always" which we know now was never going to be true for the two of them. It's also a moment of stasis - and moments are all we ever get in a rapidly-changing world. There's an el;ement of wish-fulfilment too - don;t we all want to be so tatally at one with someone else as Jack is here?

[tpe]

It also underlines the earlier phrase "It could be like this, just like this, always" which we know now was never going to be true for the two of them. It's also a moment of stasis - and moments are all we ever get in a rapidly-changing world. There's an el;ement of wish-fulfilment too - don;t we all want to be so tatally at one with someone else as Jack is here?

Yes, but it is a rare thing to find it.  Even the falshback scene was not perfect, as we read in that beautiful passage in the short story...

[welshwitch]

It's also of course juxtaposed with the last time we see them together, this time with Jack holding Ennis. the movie at least implicitly makes the point that this is where they started then where they ended, so that we see their trajectory - and because of this I don't see any future for them even had Jack not died. In essence they have spent nearly twenty years destroying each other; Jack at least is aware of this and Ennis I think suddenly realises it too.

[jackster]

I don't see any future for them even had Jack not died. In essence they have spent nearly twenty years destroying each other . . .

Oh man, I've read a lot (nowhere near all!) of your posts, but I guess I never understood that this is how you interpreted the finality here. This seems really depressing to me WW. Maybe it is . . .

"for what they'd said was no news. Nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved . . . . . because he did not want to see or feel that it was Jack he held. And maybe, he thought, they'd never got much farther than that. Let be, let be."

But, I've known people who truly have destroyed their lives (and others') and it can be much worse than where Jack and Ennis end up. Maybe it's the half-full/half-empty syndrome. Yeah, they didn't end up the happily married couple, but gosh, they had a deep, meaningful relationship for 20 years. Lots of us humans don't get that much and would be happy to have had considerably less. If Jack and Ennis had never found each other would they have been happier? If by meeting each other they end up destroying each other it almost sounds as if this is what your saying. Am I over reading what you've said here or was it just a long night?

jackster

[tpe]

In essence, I think Gyllenhaal said as much when he implied that he thought Jack saw it the same way and was ready to move on.  But again, that didn't mean that Jack stopped loving Ennis.  It was probably with great resignation that Jack acknowledged to himself that things would probably not change as far as his dream of a sweet life was concerned. In a sense, letting go was what part of what this scene was all about...

[FlwrChild]

I guess I take a less bleak interpretation from all of this, like jackster. I don't know if they ever would have moved any further in their relationship or not. But from the passage in the short story,
 
....they torqued things almost to where they had been, for what they'd said was no news. Nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved.
Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see nor feel that it was Jack he held. And maybe, he thought, they'd never got much farther than that. Let be, let be.

I see resignation in Jack, but not an outright indication that he was giving up on anything. And perhaps even a glimmer of feeling that in spite of all the pain, that moment and what it represented was worth the cost. The fact that we don't know what would have come next for them only adds to the lack of closure, both for them and for us. And for possibilities that may or may not ever have been realized.

[welshwitch]

Jackster, I'm speaking of myself as much as Ennis and Jack, I think. I was involved in a long, intense relationship - I wouldn't have not had it. If I could go back I wouldn't change a thing, but after ten or more years it ended very badly - the ending was implicit from the beginning, though neither of us wanted to confront that fact until the end. And so I see Jack and Ennis in the same way - however much you love someone, sometimes it's not going to work, things aren't going to get any better, there are things you can't change, so self-preservation, maybe pride or a sense of self-worth, demands that you walk away, specially when there is, as in the final confrontation scene , something which brings out all the problems and shws you how insoluble they are.

That Ennis and Jack loved each other is a given; it's also what made them what they are by the end and what destroys them. Of course society and its prejudces plays its part, but basically it's their love and Ennis's conviction that he can't openly act on it that drives Jack, and probably Ennis too, to desperation. I try to read the ending in other ways, but I can't convince myself.

[tpe]

I guess I take a less bleak interpretation from all of this, like jackster. I don't know if they ever would have moved any further in their relationship or not. But from the passage in the short story,
 
....they torqued things almost to where they had been, for what they'd said was no news. Nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved.
Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see nor feel that it was Jack he held. And maybe, he thought, they'd never got much farther than that. Let be, let be.

I see resignation in Jack, but not an outright indication that he was giving up on anything. And perhaps even a glimmer of feeling that in spite of all the pain, that moment and what it represented was worth the cost. The fact that we don't know what would have come next for them only adds to the lack of closure, both for them and for us. And for possibilities that may or may not ever have been realized.

It is a blessing that we are denied closure.  If we go by the bleak interpretation, then the end would have been very tough to swallow.  It is hard enough as it is, no? 

The Dozy Embrace is a moment of true peace in the eye of the storm.

[jackster]

Trying to keep to the flashback topic, (it gets a little confusing with the other threads of how they saw one another and also comparing the SS/film versions). My feeling on the flashback was that it showed, no matter how difficult the relationship got, there was a time and place when it truly did shine brilliantly in a perfect light if ever so briefly. Certainly Annie spells out Jacks feelings of dissatisfaction 20 years later, but, she also says, as FlwrChild quotes, that “nothing marred it”. So it did provide true comfort and satisfaction in the soul, if ever so momentarily, in that “one brief shining moment that was Camelot” (1963 again). Whatever disappontments were to come, “Jack remembered and craved” this moment 20 years later as deeply meaningful. And, “One thing never changed, the brilliant charge of their infrequent couplings . . . . ” so the spark was still there.

It's curious that our view into Ennis at this point is similarly deep but of an entirely different nature, instead of a foggy reverie we read him in present time “heart shot, face grey and deeplined . . eyes screwed shut. . legs caving” a body crushed with his pent-up emotions. Jack’s emotions are the dreamy, starry eyed one’s, Ennis’s the right-now real-world ones, which is the the basic character development of the whole story (damn she’s a good writer!!).

Jakes comments about how he felt Jack saw it are interesting, but on the otherhand, not to be too callus about it, his (Jakes) work was done at this point (at least in the story timeline) so it was time for him to move on too.

“Sometimes I miss you so much I can hardly stand it” has never sounded to me like the admission of someone who was ready to move on. The big argument that follows is, IMHO, a lovers spate that revolves around a lots of issues dealing with the deep 20 year releationship like many spats do. For myself I have never subscribed to the premise that Jacks death meant he was in any meaningful way involved with Randall. Only that he was “playing around” not too much more or less than he was twenty years earlier with the rodeo clown.

And as you say tpe, to me it is the lack of closure that keeps us all guessing and redoing, and redoing, and redoing what it all means. If it was a resolved would we be anywhere near as facinated by it?

jackster

[FlwrChild]

These are my impressions as well.

[manhattangirl]

IMHO:

Ennis was always the realist, and Jack the dreamer which is cause of great tension between the two.   Ennis ridicule of Jack's suggestion he move to Texas, and Jack's response "if you want live your miserable f@#king life, then go right ahead", the state of their lives did not escape them. 

These two men spent most of their relationship way out in the middle of nowhere, at war with one another.  Fighting for the same thing, but in different ways, with different objectives.   Along with this damnable need for each other. 

Jack's moving on with Randall could be a great possibility, this man made no attempts to try to change Jack at all,  he just wanted him, for Jack it  may have been a weak attempt to escape the pain of Ennis, it must have so deeply frustrating to him.

Lureen points out in the phone call from Ennis, he was drinking more,and he spoke of Brokeback, in a way that she thought it was fantasy he had.   Pop Twist's statement to Ennis like all of Jack's ideas nothing came of  Ennis or his new "friend" getting the ranch into shape.   Who loved Jack?   Who believed in him?   His abusive father, the very cool polite wife, and could Ennis be placed in this group? 

Ennis in those conversation learned more about his dead lover than the twenty or so years he spent with him.  Jack paid the price of his love for Ennis all the years they were together.  Ennis with knowledge of how his lover really felt for him, and how their love affected him, is something Ennis didn't understand up until Jack's death, and would have to live with.   

Do you think at this time Ennis finally saw Jack as he really was, and who he was to him?   I mean,  It wasn't the dozy embrace for Ennis that solidified in his memory their relationship but his blood on Jack's shirt of twenty years earlier.  After all Ennis was a realist, Jack the dreamer.

[aintfoolin]

Yes ,Ennis learned alot at LF  about Jack's own  conflict with the relationship. He learned the extent of Jack's love for him but also that Jack had limits too. OMT's statement about the *ranch foreman* told Ennis that at the least there was competion in the mix. A result of his own refusal to commit to a whole life with Jack and that Jack was at least thinking about moving on with someone else. Someone who would give Jack what he was unable to give him.
 I feel that the shirts and the blood on them sybolized Jack's undeniable  undying love for Ennis but also the battle they were in to sustain that love. They fought against society and ironically against each other. Ennis's *inner conflicts*  about who he really was resulted in the blood being there and Jack's attempts to feel satisfied with what little peices  of time Ennis could give him.  This arrangement increasingly slid downhill for Jack as he grew older, he wanted more, the next step in the growth of the relationship. Unforunatly Ennis was not ready or did not have the knowledge to do so.
Randall was there for a very vulnerable Jack. Not only had Jack grown tired of (* a coulpa high altitude f-cks twice a year*) I think he felt a increasing withdrawl on Ennis's part,simply called him on it and got his answer. Ennis was desperatly tired of the many disruptions and lies and secrets and sacrifices he was having to endure just to see the one he loved.  Yet he still  loved Jack deeply and could  not resist nor control the need to be with him.  Between a rock and a very hard place.           

[welshwitch]

It's so typical that Jack loves Ennis with no concrete proof of Ennis's returning his feelings except by turning up each time. Ennis, who's a pragmatist, practical, keeping his emotions hidden most of the time, is convinced only by the shirts, which are a more eloquent proof of Jack's feelings than anything he could have said to Ennis.

[tpe]

“Sometimes I miss you so much I can hardly stand it” has never sounded to me like the admission of someone who was ready to move on. The big argument that follows is, IMHO, a lovers spate that revolves around a lots of issues dealing with the deep 20 year releationship like many spats do. For myself I have never subscribed to the premise that Jacks death meant he was in any meaningful way involved with Randall. Only that he was “playing around” not too much more or less than he was twenty years earlier with the rodeo clown.

But I did feel that that statement was a cry of despeartion -- a cry for help.  Somehow, I did feel that in voicing this, Jack was saying that he was at his wit's end...

And as you say tpe, to me it is the lack of closure that keeps us all guessing and redoing, and redoing, and redoing what it all means. If it was a resolved would we be anywhere near as facinated by it?

jackster

Yes, in this way, it is best that there is no definitive resolution.  In fact, this lack of resolution is present even in the Dozy Embrace.  But its presence did not mar the beauty and peace of this wonmderful scene.

[tpe]

Do you think at this time Ennis finally saw Jack as he really was, and who he was to him?   I mean,  It wasn't the dozy embrace for Ennis that solidified in his memory their relationship but his blood on Jack's shirt of twenty years earlier.  After all Ennis was a realist, Jack the dreamer.

Very good point, manhattangirl.  I do beleiev that that scene with the shirts is the spiritual pendant to the Dozy Embrace.