Author Topic: Shirts - possible spolier!  (Read 14935 times)

Offline jimnick

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Shirts - possible spolier!
« on: Jan 05, 2006, 09:56 AM »
So subtle and heartwrenching when Ennis finds his long lost shirt, still bloody, sheltered inside of Jack's still bloody shirt all those years later.  Jack had secretly protected them, hidden deep in his "closet".  How poetic is that?  Ennis of course takes the shirts and hangs them behind a door in his trailer, close at hand but just out of sight to the casual viewer, so like him, true but, notice that it is his shirt that is now sheltering Jack's shirt.  When it's no longer possible to do in life he is wrapping his love around Jack and swearing "A Love That Will Never Grow Old"
« Last Edit: Jan 05, 2006, 01:02 PM by frog123 »

Offline tpe

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Re: Shirts
« Reply #1 on: Jan 05, 2006, 11:06 AM »
So subtle and heartwrenching when Ennis finds his long lost shirt, still bloody, sheltered inside of Jack's still bloody shirt all those years later.  Jack had secretly protected them, hidden deep in his "closet".  How poetic is that?  Ennis of course takes the shirts and hangs them behind a door in his trailer, close at hand but just out of sight to the casual viewer, so like him, true but, notice that it is his shirt that is now sheltering Jack's shirt.  When it's no longer possible to do in life he is wrapping his love around Jack and swearing "A Love That Will Never Grow Old"

Yes, to see that one shirt is tucked carefully inside the other: this image has a 'protective', nurturing feel to it.

Offline jimnick

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Re: Shirts - possible spolier!
« Reply #2 on: Jan 05, 2006, 06:42 PM »
It's like the tenderest thing in whe whole world.  I bought the soundtrack yesterday and have played it ceaselessly; in the truck, on the laptop at the jobsite, on the computer at home.  I'm not an emotional guy but this story has gotten to me deep and how.  I bought the book "Wyoming Stories" and read Brokeback Mountain three times today.  Going to see the movie again tonight.  I know I'll bawl.  Some fine construction worker I am, huh?

Offline tpe

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Re: Shirts - possible spolier!
« Reply #3 on: Jan 05, 2006, 06:47 PM »
It's like the tenderest thing in whe whole world.  I bought the soundtrack yesterday and have played it ceaselessly; in the truck, on the laptop at the jobsite, on the computer at home.  I'm not an emotional guy but this story has gotten to me deep and how.  I bought the book "Wyoming Stories" and read Brokeback Mountain three times today.  Going to see the movie again tonight.  I know I'll bawl.  Some fine construction worker I am, huh?

I have not yet gotten the soundtrack.  Thanks for the comments.  Like the film, the soundtrack is simple, straightforward, and goes straight to the heart.  And why be afraid to brawl when one is so moved?

Offline *Froggy*

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Re: Shirts - possible spolier!
« Reply #4 on: Jan 05, 2006, 06:48 PM »
I have not yet gotten the soundtrack.  Thanks for the comments.  Like the film, the soundtrack is simple, straightforward, and goes straight to the heart.  And why be afraid to brawl when one is so moved?

you do know you can listen to it on the http://www.brokebackmountain.com/home.html web site...there is a music player with the complete soundtrack!

x Froggy
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Offline tpe

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Re: Shirts - possible spolier!
« Reply #5 on: Jan 05, 2006, 06:51 PM »
you do know you can listen to it on the http://www.brokebackmountain.com/home.html web site...there is a music player with the complete soundtrack!

x Froggy

Thanks Froggy!  As usual, you are a font of information. :)

Offline *Froggy*

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Re: Shirts - possible spolier!
« Reply #6 on: Jan 05, 2006, 06:52 PM »
Just happy I can help!  ;)
Support bacteria, they are the only culture some people have!


If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.
~ Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592) ~ (Thankx to gimmejack)

Offline jimnick

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Re: Shirts - possible spolier!
« Reply #7 on: Jan 05, 2006, 07:06 PM »
thanks, Froggy,  You're super!

Jim

Offline chameau

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Re: Shirts - possible spolier!
« Reply #8 on: Jan 06, 2006, 12:39 AM »
Jim you are right!  The shirts scene and the last scene are just pure poetry, not seen oftenly on movies.  Thanks for bringning us this subjet.  Actually those 2 scenes are the ones that brought me to tears.

Love from Montreal,

Pierre
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Offline brokebackmountain

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Re: Shirts - possible spolier!
« Reply #9 on: Jan 06, 2006, 04:21 AM »
So subtle and heartwrenching when Ennis finds his long lost shirt, still bloody, sheltered inside of Jack's still bloody shirt all those years later.  Jack had secretly protected them, hidden deep in his "closet".  How poetic is that?  Ennis of course takes the shirts and hangs them behind a door in his trailer, close at hand but just out of sight to the casual viewer, so like him, true but, notice that it is his shirt that is now sheltering Jack's shirt.  When it's no longer possible to do in life he is wrapping his love around Jack and swearing "A Love That Will Never Grow Old"

It is one of the scene that tore me apart at the end. I didn't notice the change of shirts until later when my friend pointed out.
Born from their love..forever bound by ours.

Offline stationbbm

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Re: Shirts - possible spolier!
« Reply #10 on: Jan 07, 2006, 02:44 AM »
For me, when Ennis finds the hidden shirts in Jack's closet, the moment is quiet and private and sacred.  Painfully sacred.  There is something almost spiritual about it.  For here, in a plain little room, Ennis realizes the depth of his love for Jack.  The whirling wind on Brokeback Mountain blew through their shirts.  The blood-stained sleeves reminded Ennis in a cowboy way of his passionate need for Jack.  The shirts held the embrace of someone he loved so desperately who was now gone.  The shirts inside of each other affirmed to Ennis that Jack's love was as close to his heart as ever.  There is something peaceful and sacred about clothing.  Often times we've come to know about a surviving spouse who goes to great lengths to preserve the clothes of his or her deceased love one.  It's a sacred way to remain connected, afraid to ever let go.
  "You know, I go back into his closet and can still smell his cologne.  It's hard to explain but it just makes me feel close to him."
  "Every Easter, she wore this old yellow sweater that reminds me of her so much.  It still hurts."
  "Sometimes I just like to put his military jacket around me so that he's close to me.  No one understands except for me."
The shirts were Ennis's way (and previously Jack's way) to hold onto and preserve what precious mattered more than anything in his whole life.  Their lives were so genuinely intertwined on Brokeback; thankfully, the shirts, one inside of the other, provide Ennis (and the audience) with that heartfelt reminder.

stationbbm

Offline Toadily

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Re: Shirts - possible spolier!
« Reply #11 on: Jan 07, 2006, 02:51 AM »
For me, when Ennis finds the hidden shirts in Jack's closet, the moment is quiet and private and sacred.  Painfully sacred.  There is something almost spiritual about it.  For here, in a plain little room, Ennis realizes the depth of his love for Jack.  The whirling wind on Brokeback Mountain blew through their shirts.  The blood-stained sleeves reminded Ennis in a cowboy way of his passionate need for Jack.  The shirts held the embrace of someone he loved so desperately who was now gone.  The shirts inside of each other affirmed to Ennis that Jack's love was as close to his heart as ever.  There is something peaceful and sacred about clothing.  Often times we've come to know about a surviving spouse who goes to great lengths to preserve the clothes of his or her deceased love one.  It's a sacred way to remain connected, afraid to ever let go.
  "You know, I go back into his closet and can still smell his cologne.  It's hard to explain but it just makes me feel close to him."
  "Every Easter, she wore this old yellow sweater that reminds me of her so much.  It still hurts."
  "Sometimes I just like to put his military jacket around me so that he's close to me.  No one understands except for me."
The shirts were Ennis's way (and previously Jack's way) to hold onto and preserve what precious mattered more than anything in his whole life.  Their lives were so genuinely intertwined on Brokeback; thankfully, the shirts, one inside of the other, provide Ennis (and the audience) with that heartfelt reminder.

stationbbm

Well put definitely, you simply can't get rid of things that remind you of someone you love.
Shakespeare put it as like keeping the grief is liking keeping them in the room with you.

It's strange how one life can do that to us, it's like we go through our lives and just do things day to day
not knowing one day or one event can just alter everything. I do think if Ennis hadn't met Jack he would
have sleep walked through his life sort of.
"it's Love, Blockhead!"
-Pierre Marivaux  The Triumph of Love

"To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should."  -Jean Rostand

Offline jimnick

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Re: Shirts - possible spolier!
« Reply #12 on: Jan 07, 2006, 11:41 AM »
I'm back on the SHIRT thing again.  Excuse me, please.  I was going to let it go but I can't, so here I am again.  I offer you all my sincerest apologies.

In seeing the movie again last night, I happen to notice that when Ennis is away from camp and Jack is in the buff, except for boots and hat, doing laundry in the river, he is washing Ennis' shirt (the one that eventually gets blood stained).  He's wringing it and beating it on rocks and then picks up a stick and starts whacking it.  I think this is subliminally telling us that he is also wrestling with his new understanding of what has happened between them.  Did anyone else pick up on this, or maybe I am crazy

Jim

Offline dirtbiker

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Re: Shirts - possible spolier!
« Reply #13 on: Jan 07, 2006, 12:07 PM »
Actually, the whacking of the shirt is to get rid of the water and nothing more.  My granny used to do the laundry by hand and I remember she used to do that, including slapping the shirt on a hard surface to get as much water out of the laundry before sun drying it....

Offline brokebackmountain

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Re: Shirts - possible spolier!
« Reply #14 on: Jan 07, 2006, 10:49 PM »
From the short story:

"The closet was a shallow cavity with a wooden rod braced across, a faded cretonne curtain on a string closing it off from the rest of the room. In the closet hung two pairs of jeans crease-ironed and folded neatly over wire hangers, on the floor a pair of worn packer boots he thought he remembered. At the north end of the closet a tiny jog in the wall made a slight hiding place and here, stiff with long suspension from a nail, hung a shirt. He lifted it off the nail. Jack's old shirt from Brokeback days. The dried blood on the sleeve was his own blood, a gushing nosebleed on the last afternoon on the mountain when Jack, in their contortionistic grappling and wrestling, had slammed Ennis's nose hard with his knee. He had staunched the blood which was everywhere, all over both of them, with his shirtsleeve, but the staunching hadn't held because Ennis had suddenly swung from the deck and laid the ministering angel out in the wild columbine, wings folded.

The shirt seemed heavy until he saw there was another shirt inside it, the sleeves carefully worked down inside Jack's sleeves. It was his own plaid shirt, lost, he'd thought, long ago in some damn laundry, his dirty shirt, the pocket ripped, buttons missing, stolen by Jack and hidden here inside Jack's own shirt, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one. He pressed his face into the fabric and breathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping for the faintest smoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of Jack but there was no real scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of Brokeback Mountain of which nothing was left but what he held in his hands."

This line stood out to me: "He pressed his face into the fabric and breathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping for the faintest smoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of Jack but there was no real scent, *only the memory of it, the imagined power of Brokeback Mountain of which nothing was left but what he held in his hands.*"

Born from their love..forever bound by ours.

Offline jimnick

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Re: Shirts - possible spolier!
« Reply #15 on: Jan 07, 2006, 11:18 PM »
He's hurtin' real bad.  The poor man is broken hearted.

Offline dirtbiker

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Re: Shirts - possible spolier!
« Reply #16 on: Jan 08, 2006, 02:05 AM »
I saw that shirt reversal today.... so choked up  :'(

Offline borger1582

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Re: Shirts - possible spolier!
« Reply #17 on: Jan 08, 2006, 12:52 PM »
Jimnick,

regarding the laundry, it's interesting to notice (and this was pointed out to me by brilliant posters on the IMDB board) that Jack is washing Ennis' shirt, and later when we see the beginning of Ennis and Alma's "domestic bliss" she 's doing the laundry by hand in the sink when he walks in . . .

Offline jimnick

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Re: Shirts - possible spolier!
« Reply #18 on: Jan 08, 2006, 01:35 PM »
borger1582
 You're right, Alma was handwashing when Ennis comes home.  Kind of iron(Pardon the pun)ic that they move into town over a laundromat, isn't it?  All that washing and he couldn't come clean...

Jim

Offline chameau

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Re: Shirts - possible spolier!
« Reply #19 on: Jan 08, 2006, 05:37 PM »
I say it again, my favorite scene.  So subtle, silent, no word is necessary.  Actually the whole time at Jack's parent's house is awesome.  The feelings of the father, the one's of the mother.  Roberta Maxwell did a wonderfull job, everything is in her eyes, she understands Ennis and there is no doubt the parents know about Jack and Ennis relationship.  She accepts it, period.  Her son was loved after all.
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Offline dirtbiker

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Re: Shirts - possible spolier!
« Reply #20 on: Jan 08, 2006, 05:47 PM »
Did you see how Jack's mother so longingly was hoping Ennis would visit them again, almost like accepting him like he was a part of their family now, like a surrogate son, since they had lost their only son.  He knew Ennis was a big part of Jack's life from the things that must've been said to them.  I'm still not sure if his dad really had much feeling for Jack however, but certainly his mother does.

Offline chameau

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Re: Shirts - possible spolier!
« Reply #21 on: Jan 08, 2006, 06:00 PM »
The father does not accept homosexuality at all, just the way he tells Ennis about this "other" friend from Texas that Jack would take to his parent's house and start a new life.  He just wanted to hurt Ennis.  Not to mention the denial of giving to Ennis the ashes of Jack:  "I know where is Brokeback Mountain!".  Yes I agree with you , Jack's mom was ready to take Ennis as surrogate son.  And she would have give him the ashes.
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Offline dirtbiker

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Re: Shirts - possible spolier!
« Reply #22 on: Jan 08, 2006, 07:20 PM »
There was a suggestion in another posting somewhere that Jack's mother slipped him some of the ashes in the paper sack, but I don't think that was the case, since on my last viewing, I noticed the shot of her taking a folded empty papersack by the kitchen counter and then giving it to Ennis to put the shirt in.

Offline jimnick

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Re: Shirts - possible spolier!
« Reply #23 on: Jan 08, 2006, 07:32 PM »
dirtbiker

... actually it is Jack's mother who puts the shirts into the bag.  She gets the bag from the counter and opens it and Ennis hands off the shirts to her as he is moving them toward the bag.  Notice how she pauses, ever so slightly, as the shirt(s) are go in.  I think that Ennis carefull folded the two shirts together so that is wasn't appearant that there were two shirts, but I think she knew by the feel and weight of bundle that there were.  She pauses a little and has an understanding look in her eyes. She does a great job.

Mothers ALWAYS know...

Jim

Offline *Froggy*

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Re: Shirts - possible spolier!
« Reply #24 on: Jan 08, 2006, 07:38 PM »
She pauses a little and has an understanding look in her eyes. She does a great job.

Mothers ALWAYS know...

Jim

yep they do!

Poor woman..it must be horrible to lose a child... :-[

It is one of the sadest scenes...she knew why she'd sent Ennis up to see Jack's room, and when he hands her the bag, she just knows, and nods...great scene!!!
« Last Edit: Jan 09, 2006, 03:42 PM by frog123 »
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Offline jimnick

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Re: Shirts - possible spolier!
« Reply #25 on: Jan 09, 2006, 10:30 PM »
God bless all mothers!

Hey wouldn't it be great if the studio auctioned off the shirts?  Would you bid?

Offline j

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The shirts
« Reply #26 on: Jan 21, 2006, 04:17 PM »
Something I have not been able to really figure out were the shirts in Jack's childhood bedroom.
I think they were the shirts when they first fought and had their encounter. Later Ennis said to Jack that he left his shirt up on the mountain and it was not mentioned again.
Then we see two shirts one inside th other hidden in the closet.Is this the *lost* shirt?
J

Offline *Froggy*

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Re: The shirts
« Reply #27 on: Jan 21, 2006, 04:24 PM »
http://www.ennisjack.com/index.php?topic=316.0

have a look at this thread

x Froggy

ps: i'll redirect this post over there if you don't mind

 ;)
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Offline j

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Re: The shirts
« Reply #28 on: Jan 21, 2006, 04:26 PM »
http://www.ennisjack.com/index.php?topic=316.0

have a look at this thread

x Froggy

ps: i'll redirect this post over there if you don't mind

 ;)

Oh shoot I messed up ! I will go check out that board.
Sorry!
J

Offline justlikethisalways

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Re: Shirts - possible spolier!
« Reply #29 on: Feb 23, 2006, 09:05 PM »
As if you didn't already have enough reason to cry over the shirts...Get your tissues ready!

Okay, so we know what Ennis does with the shirts in Jack's closet -- but what about Jack?

Do you think Jack ever picked up those shirts and held/cradled them, etc. as Ennis did? Or did they just sit in the closet all those years?

I can't help but picture Jack going into the closet and holding those shirts every time he was at his parents' house after one of their fishing trips. He would have been so lonely the first night without Ennis, missing him so much that it hurt. I see him going into that closet, picking up the shirts, cradling them in his bosom, taking them with him into that cold hard bed and falling asleep crying softly into them. Once asleep he might've dreamed that he'd finally gotten Ennis to come live in Lightning Flat, that they were finally happy together, only to be bitterly disappointed the next morning that his dream had not come true.

Those shirts may well have had more than Ennis's blood in them -- they may have been stained with 20 years' of Jack's tears...

 :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'(