Ann, Thank you.
And what can be more devastating to us than to follow THIS heart-wrenching embrace with the DOZY embrace flashback. The effect is even more painful seeing how they were before, contrasted with the hopelessness of the present situation.
The contrast is beyond tears. It is at this point in the movie that I think I die in a certain way.
Contrast and juxtaposition show up everywhere in this film, absolutely.
Ennis saying "I can't stand this anymore, Jack" can be linked directly back to their first camping trip on the four year reunion. Ennis says then "If you can't fix it, Jack, you gotta stand it". When Jack asks for how long, Ennis tells him for as long as they can ride it, there ain't no reins on this one.
So the last time they're together, when Ennis confesses that he can't stand it anymore, it really foreshadows a ending to their relationship
as it existed at that point, although who would ever have believed it would truly end so abruptly or so cruelly.
And I refer to the ending of their existing arrangements because, you have to hope, that if Jack hadn't been killed, maybe Ennis would have finally realized that
if you can't stand it, you have to fix it ... and made a change for the positive. I like to think that if they'd had more time, with Jack out of patience and not satisfied to put up with this anymore either, Ennis would have had to bend a little, rather than risk losing Jack completely. Ennis wasn't calling all the shots anymore. That scared him as much as anything, I think, and was partly why he broke down.
This has to be one of my favorite scenes, BTW, in spite of how sad, because it rings with so much passion and truth. Rips your heart out, everytime.