With apologies to anyone who read this already on IMDB when I posted it weeks ago, here's why I think there is some hope for Ennis. No guarantees, no certainties, but hope.
The other morning I woke up with the realization that there is hope for the future of Ennis. Funny how these things work in your mind without you knowing it, but that’s the power of this film.
The Ennis we see in the film is closed…tight…clenched…hard-packed…volatile.
With very few exceptions, the Ennis we see is all of these things day in and day out *except* for his time with Jack. It’s the only time he lets himself be anything else. And even up through his time with Cassie this hasn’t changed.
Jack, late in their relationship, says famously “You have no IDEA how bad it gets” in describing the longing, gnawing, consuming ache he felt. And for all that Ennis did feel, I still don't think he quite "got it" the way Jack did. Not in quite the same way, because he wouldn’t let himself.
But after Jack’s death, we see that at last he does get it that way.
Now he understands because the opening created by Jack was still there even though Jack was no longer there to fill it. Ennis COULD have wrapped back up, turned further inside of himself and suffocated that part of himself. That part of himself that felt longing and loneliness. But he didn’t. He kept that open *on his own*. We see this in the final scene. Remember it opens with Ennis putting numbers on his mailbox. He’s clearly moved, and a good piece of time has passed since the news of Jack. Were Ennis to have closed back up and reverted to his old self, moving would have been the perfect time for the postcard and the shirts to have been packed away. Even thrown away. But he keeps them fully displayed in a place he goes often – hanging on the inside door of the closet.
Certainly this shows us that Ennis still loves Jack immensely, indeed this is a wrenching end to a remarkable story. Tearing up right here at work thinking about it. But it ALSO shows us that Ennis has kept his feelings of longing and loneliness with him rather than burying them away. He has been changed by all this in a way that probably would never have happened without the loss of Jack. His years with Jack opened him up so very much, yet still never enough for Ennis to really reconcile himself with everything. Not really. And so he could never really give Jack everything he needed.
But now in his loss, Ennis has *alone* allowed himself to open up further. To reconcile a bit more his outward self with his Brokeback self. He finally feels what Jack, a more emotionally developed man, felt all those years. And in this I believe there is hope. Before all of this Ennis wasn’t really able to emotionally “be” with someone. But this same opening, this same vulnerability that allows Ennis to feel the pain of Jack to come in also allows the possibility of someone else to come in. Maybe it’s in a form of a friend. Or a relationship of some sort. Or an actual bond with his daughters whom he seems to want to love all along but can’t quite close the deal on. Maybe Ennis, in spite of now feeling the loneliness and longing, never even musters the courage to seek out any of these. But if it comes to him, I believe the Ennis we see in the closing frames could finally let himself embrace this.
And in this, I for one see hope.
