I’m actually going to disagree with you guys on this one. I think the film (like the original story) leaves it ambiguous as to how Jack died for a reason. I think that the message of the movie is about the impact of societal homophobia on one man. Because it doesn’t matter how Jack died. What matters is that Ennis believes he was murdered. He was always convinced that this was the inevitable end for two men who wanted to be together – at least one of them would be dead at the hands of angry men. It’s what he was wired to believe. The tragedy of the story is that Ennis never escaped the lessons of his youth and the image of Earl in that ditch. He was never able to see a world where two men could be happy – and safe – together. So no matter how hard Jack lobbied for that life (and no matter how badly Ennis might have wanted it too), it was never going to happen because Ennis couldn’t move past that fear and he wasn’t willing to take that chance. Jack believed in that life and seemed to think it was worth it to take that risk. Much like Rich and Earl.* Ironically, after all his years of efforts to protect them, Ennis still lost Jack and ended up in a world without him.
*{I think it would be interesting to have a talk with both Ennis and Rich to find out which of the two men regretted their choices more – would it have been better to let go of the love of his life to ensure their safety and never have the life together that they did or better to take the chance, have that life, and lose his partner to violence but have the memories of their shared time together to hold onto for the rest of his life? Hmmm.}
As for whether Jack decided to walk away from Ennis after that last confrontation, I’ll always go back to the dozy embrace and how the original story described it. Of their fight it said, “…they’d torqued things almost to where they had been, for what they’d said was no news.
Nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved.” And of the embrace, “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 or feel that it was Jack he held. And maybe, he thought, they’d never got much farther than that. Let be, let be.”
I realize of course that those words did not appear in the movie so I would not criticize anyone else’s interpretation, nor would I suggest that mine is any better or more accurate than anyone else’s. It’s just the feeling I hold onto because it hurts too much for me to contemplate a world where Jack gives up on Ennis.
Oh and having read many other message boards on this topic when the movie first came out, I have to say that like both of you I thought the accident as described by Lureen sounded a little implausible but a lot of people posted that such an accident is not actually that unheard of. Go figure. I don’t know anything about cars. Or tires.
