Recent Posts41
Characters, Quotes & Scenes / Re: Ennis VS Randall
« Last post by davidinnyc on Mar 16, 2018, 11:22 AM »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.
Thanks FlwrChild for your post. I think what you said it very insightful and offers a different perspective to look into Jack's death.I have a few points to make based on my understanding of your post, tho. If my understanding is off, please let me know. Haha.
1. I get the point that it's not how Jack died matters but rather how Ennis believes he died matters. Like I said, I think it's very insightful. But I get a hint of the reasoning here being "Lureen's ambiguous story gives Ennis a chance to believe Jack's murdered, thus we can see Ennis can never escape his childhood shadow." I personally think this argument is not logically strong enough. If the point is "Ennis cannot escape his childhood and believes Earl's death is how gay men end", then the stronger case to make the point would be "Ennis believes Jack's murdered even when he was told Jack died in a plausible accident, like a car accident". Right now Lureen's story doe not only make Ennis think Jack's murdered, it also make many other people feel like something is off and those people don't have the same childhood issues that Ennis has. It's just a fishy story, not just to Ennis, but to everyone. I think even for people who choose to believe Lureen's story had to give it a second thought and tried to convince themselves this might be some weird possibility.
2. I personally have no car fixing experience either. But I think you don't need that experience to doubt the credibility of Lureen's story. It's basic physics. When the tire blows up, there is an energy release (gravitational potential energy) and it's possible the rim could fly out. When the rim flies out, it can only fly out horizontally and not upwards. If the rim hit Jack's face, that means Jack was almost lying on the ground fixing the car, which is odd already. But let's say somehow Jack's face was hit by the rim. No matter what, the rim can only hit Jack's face once. And according to Lureen, this one hit accomplished 4 things: "break his nose""break his jaw""knock him unconscious""on the back". It's highly impossible that the flying rim would carry that much energy to do this. It's a tire rim, not a bomb.
I agree that Ennis has his own issues. But I don't think that's the only message that film makers are sending here. If Lureen told Ennis that Jack died from a car accident (which is a lot more plausible) and Ennis still thinks Jack's murdered in his head, then the movie still leaves Jack death ambiguous because we still can't tell if Lureen told the truth and Ennis obviously doesn't believe her. If the movie ended this way, I think the message focus more on Ennis' issue. It's his own issue that took away his happy life together with Jack. But the movie makers let Lureen told a cover-up sounding story, I think it implies more about Jack's murder and Ennis' fear is real and necessary. That's why many gay man like Ennis live in fear.
