The link and (more so) your comments are greatly appreciated, jetzenpolis.
I love this one the most -- so endearing.
Ang Lee told him: "be still."
Thank you jetzenpolis! This truly is 'must see'!
Yes, tpe, Ennis, I love that thought about "stillness", too. It's one more perspective that Heath Ledger took toward Brokeback Mountain (and perhaps life, too) that makes me stop. I simply admire it and the sort of person he must be for having been able to see things that way.
Ennis seems to have had so little "stillness." (Perhaps Heath Ledger, too, it seems.)
Carmilla, I completely agree with you that the Charlie Rose interview with Ang Lee and Heath Ledger is a "must see" interview. It provides a lot of perspective on how the director and one of its two lead male actors saw the characters, themselves, in their interpretations of them. (Annie Proulx thought that Heath Ledger's performance was outstanding. She said that when she first saw Heath Ledger on the screen, in the movie, she felt she was seeing Ennis come to life before her very eyes. She's also reported as having said that she learned new things from Heath Ledger about Ennis that she had never thought of before. She admitted having the "sour grapes" of bitterness toward the Oscars for not having awarded Heath Ledger an Oscar for "best male actor.")
I'm still amazed Heath Ledger's portrayal of Ennis del Mar continues to be so moving. Even just listening to his voice (as Ennis), I hear emotions in it that I'm simply not able to pin down precisely.
Ennis fears this "thing" between him and Jack. The "thing" for Ennis, of course, is the strong spontaneous emotion that moved Ennis - whom he had not seen for four years since they came down from Brokeback Mountain - to suddenly, with a look to see if no one was watching, to "risk" kissing Jack while they were at the bottom of the landing steps leading up to Ennis's & Alma's apartment over the laundromat in Riverton, WY.
It's as if Ennis can't excuse himself for having "let go" of himself long enough to let himself follow his emotions for Jack. He tells Jack later, when they are together alone, that if the "thing" ever catches them in the wrong place, at the wrong time, they are "dead." (Ennis literally fears that if their homosexuality is discovered - especially at an intimate moment - homophobic vigilantes will identify them and they will become targets marked for death.)
Listening to Heath Ledger says these words, the "vulnerability" in his voice can be heard. The tone of it envelops me in the sudden poignancy of his emotions at the moment he says them to Jack.
Ennis cares about Jack. He cares about staying alive. He cares about their being able to have as much of a life together as he thinks they will be able to ("realistically") have - while remaining safe, hidden from the suspicions of eagerly homophobic "vigilantes" - who will have an overexcited, rapacious willingness to chase them down, torture and, finally, murder them.
There are some people who like to be vigilantes. Anger stirs their blood. Such people always know who it is whom society doesn't care about. Society usually doesn't care very much about what happens to those it finds "deviant" (or even those it finds merely a "nuisance"). No questions will be asked if they are gone. The killers are seen as trash collectors who have come in the darkness to remove the trash.
It is perhaps because Ennis is so torn between wishing to be happy, wishing to be with Jack, and wishing to remain within the "safe" confines of conformity (to heterosexual social norms, if not all social "norms"), that his emotions are so poignant.
Or, are they "poignant" because he feels (fears?) Jack won't "understand"? Ennis seems to be asking Jack to "prove" that he cares about them by simply accepting his (Ennis's) fears at face value.
Perhaps Jack's emotions can never be as "vulnerable," as "poignant," as Ennis's (with Ennis perhaps interpreting, misinterpreting his emotions as more "beautiful" because of their vulnerability, poignancy). But Jack's emotions can't possibly be as "vulnerable." Jack is less afraid.
In American culture, a "romantic dreamer" is often criticized for a lack of "realism." Ennis sees Jack as a "romantic dreamer." But when it comes to matters of the heart, who is the "realist," who is the "dreamer"? Jack is a dreamer with the realism of the need to be a rebel (against the rules as they are).
In Ennis's dreams of Jack, at the end of Annie Proulx's short story, Ennis dreams of the young Jack, as he was on Brokeback Mountain, with wavy hair and buck teeth. A "can of beans with a dirty spoon sticking out of it" sitting on a log mars the reverie of Ennis's dreams with its "garish" appearance. Did the mature Jack mar Ennis's dreams of what Ennis thought his life should be?) Annie Proulx finds Ennis - in his dreams and memories of Jack at the end of the story - somewhere in between what he wishes to "believe" and what he "knows."
"Stillness" might have brought Ennis to a realization of the decisions he had to make. It might have given him the clarity - and, thus, the courage - to make the right ones.