In a weird set of circumstances I discovered today that the actor who portrays John Twist, Jack's father, lives not ten minutes from me in New Jersey. But my subject is about the look of the eyes during certain scenes. When Jack Twist returns to Joe Aguirre's trailer to seek further work on Brokeback and to ask if Aguirre had heard from Ennis, Aguirre tells Jack that there's no work for him and the well known quote about how Aguirre paid Ennis and Jack to guard the woolies. Except that the dogs wound up babysitting the sheep while Jack and Ennis "stemmed the rose." When Aguirre is giving Jack this reprimand the camera closes in on Aguirre's face. His eyes, particularly the right eye, has the glassy look of a marble about it. It's also in this scene that I think that Jack Twist, with his hat in his hand, looks incredibly handsome. His hair is flattened by his just removed hat, but his eyes look enormous in this scene. His eyes were hungry enough with longing for Ennis for him to travel nearly one thousand miles, from Texas to Wyoming, on the off chance that he might hear word about Ennis from Aguirre. That took guts, I thought, because Aguirre's sentiment towards Jack and Ennis was that they were useless ranch stiffs.
Getting back to the look of eyes in this film: When the brokenhearted Ennis travels to Lightning Flat to see Jack's parents and ask about scattering Jack's ashes on Brokeback Mountain, John, Jack Twist's father gives Ennis a withering speech about the plans Jack had and how Jack had even planned to bring another man to the Twist ranch and beat it into shape. This, in my impression, was a deliberate turn of the knife in Ennis' heart. But maybe it really didn't matter to Ennis because he rested assured in Jack Twist's eternal love. "I know where Brokeback Mountain is," John Twist said. "Tell you what. We've got a family plot and he's going in it." And in the scene before Ennis ascends to Jack's old boyhood room, again I find the marble, glassy-eyed look in John Twist's eyes.
