Anne Hathaway was good in that. I don't think Hathaway's character ever knew or even suspected about his being gay (people didn't think such things applied to any but the most stereotypically obvious in those days), but she knew there was something wrong in the marriage and probably suspected him of cheating, just not with a man. absolutely nothing. This film has stayed closed to my heart ever since. I think he was distraught by Ennis's rejection and had a death wish to some degree, so maybe he got careless enough that they were seen in a compromising situation, or maybe he got killed by some rough trade. It is open to interpretation. The two men continue to see each other occasionally, but they never return to Brokeback. If you can't find the email you can resend it here. I always thought that Jack had been set up to be murdered by his father-in-law, who had been humiliated by Jack at the holiday dinner and had probably tumbled onto the fact that Jack was gay. So tragic. [quote]California wasn't all that much better in the '60s and '70s. The story leaps backward in time, to the spring of 1963, when Ennis and Jack first meet at the trailer office of Wyoming’s Farm and Ranch Employment. He thought he was too goddamn special to be buried in the family plot" (140). Jack and Ennis are teenagers, born and bred in opposite corners of Wyoming on poor ranches. She comes out again when the men have separated, and Ennis introduces Jack to her. But I am different from everyone else in that I see a glimmer of acceptance during her call with Ennis. Shut the fuck up! Aguirre instructs the herder to sleep with the sheep in a pup tent, armed but without a fire, to prevent coyotes from killing the animals. [quote]Jack was seeing other men due to Ennis’ retesence. R7 Anne Hathaway is so unlikable. I'd forgotten that DL semi-fave David Harbour played Jack's rebound guy. Hello and thank you for registering. "Brokeback Mountain" is one of several really good short stories in Annie Proulx's "Close Range" book. Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. He tells Ennis he was surprised by the punch on the last day. After he realized Ennis would never find the courage to leave Wyoming and live with him, he started satisfying his urges elsewhere, first with Mexican hustlers, then with the rancher. Yes, she knew...and it was an embarrassment to her. At age fourteen he received a hardship grant for a truck to drive to school, but the truck soon broke down and he went to work on a ranch. Ennis meets Jack's mom and dad at the end of the story, when he comes to ask them if he can have their half of Jack's ashes. At some point, he drops out of high school. When Jack arrives, Ennis runs to greet him. our privacy/terms or if you just want to see the damn every single site you visit? By entering your email address you agree to receive emails from Shmoop and verify that you are over the age of 13. By Annie Proulx. Twist says Jack had long spoken of coming home to Lightning Flat with Ennis to help run the ranch, but had recently begun talking of bringing home another man, a Texan, instead. No, when Proulx chose a couple of gay Wyoming ranchhands for her tale of forbidden love in the modern world, she chose right. While Jack has his wife’s money and her inherited business to fall back on, Ennis lives paycheck to paycheck and can’t miss work. That little yelp she lets out when she finds out Brokeback is real is the best acting of Hathaway's career. She sticks to the script. Jack has married a Texan girl, Lureen. r18 California wasn't all that much better in the '60s and '70s. It's also left deliberately ambiguous in the book, but Ennis thinks Jack was murdered. The two men say goodbye, each evasive about his plans for the next summer. In the Summer of 1963 Wyoming, two young men, Ennis a ranch hand and Jack an aspiring rodeo bull rider, are sent to work together herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain, and what had otherwise been anticipated to be a rather uneventful venture, will soon turn into an affair of love, of lust, and complications that will spand through 19 years of their lives. Anne Hathaway’s acting during the scene with Anna Faris implies to me she knew her husband was gay but didn’t care because it was another fuck you at society. During one trip, Ennis tells Jack he won’t be able to see him until November, although they’d planned to meet in August. Hello. Ennis decides to visit Jack’s family in Lightning Flat, Wyoming. Jack has done this once before, but Ennis is new to the job. Please complete the process by verifying your email address. It's Ennis who's convinced Jack was killed because Ennis has had a life-long fear of ending up like that murdered guy he talks about early in the film, the one he thinks might have been killed by his own father. In the closet Ennis discovers an old shirt of Jack’s, stained with Ennis’s blood, layered over a shirt of Ennis’s, from their Brokeback days. At a Thanksgiving dinner, she confronts Ennis about his affair with Jack, and he storms out. It's an awkward encounter, to say the least. Mr. I think that a better actress than Anne Hathaway could have made the role a bit less stereotypical, but there really wasn't that much to work with to being with. It's a head versus heart issue. The narration shifts into past tense, signaling the beginning of the narrative of which we have just glimpsed the ending. In August, the sheep get mixed up with a Chilean herd, and Ennis and the Chilean herder struggle to separate them. The sex happens many times after that, but they deny their homosexuality. For the best experience on our site, be sure to turn on Javascript in your browser. Ennis decides to visit Jack’s family in … Screenwriter Diana Ossana discovered Annie Proulx 's short story, Brokeback Mountain, in October 1997, just days after its publication. She was not really sure whether her husband was actually gay until Ennis confirmed Brokeback Moutain is real. It's the reason he won't go in with Jack on his proposal of a "little cow and calf operation.". Plus I think that Ang Lee was the wrong choice to direct the film. My ex felt she didn’t know and she was telling the story that was told to her. It was like she'd known he was sleeping with men, but learning that he had a special romance and a favorite place from when he lived with Ennis added a layer to his life she hadn't been expecting. site without all this bureaucratic nonsense, Around this time, Jack begins to appear in Ennis’s dreams. Ennis buys a postcard of Brokeback and tacks it to his trailer wall; he hangs the two shirts beneath it on a nail. In late August, Aguirre calls the men and sheep down from the mountain and frowns as he pays Jack and Ennis, knowing that some of the sheep aren’t his. Yes- it’s quite apparent on the phone call- remember, by that time Jack was seeing other men due to Ennis’ retesence. click ACCEPT I think that the women's roles were poorly written in Brokeback Mountain. I think it may have come off as a better movie if it had been given to Merchant & Ivory, who themselves knew about forbidden love. Both are well acquainted with a life of hard work and rough living, and both are high school dropouts. Hathaway said that she shot two takes of the scene: one in which Lureen "knew what was going on with Jake's character Jack and that he'd been cheating on me with men and that I knew about the gay bashing," and one in which Lureen "had no idea... you know, it was a terrible accident with a car tire." Ennis, a middle-aged ranch hand, wakes before five in his trailer. ". Months later, a postcard Ennis has mailed to Jack is returned to him, stamped “DECEASED.” Ennis calls Lureen, and she says that Jack had an accident: he was changing a tire when it blew up, sending the rim into his face. Please click here to update your account with a username and password. The next day, they reminisce about their time on Brokeback and talk about their feelings. She comes off like a snotty theater kid trying to put on the “I’m so soft spoken and sweet” role. When Ennis says that Brokeback was a real place, she has a delayed realization who Ennis is and what he was to her husband, but she's a Southern lady and not about to get confrontational on the phone. They part ways as though they don’t care. She convinced writing partner Larry McMurty … For the best experience on our site, be sure to turn on Javascript in your browser. But she won’t let Ennis know that. Brokeback Mountain ; Jacks mother father; Study Guide. And she has one of those weird faces where she needs her makeup to be very different from usual, but it's almost never done so she's always extra fugly. Even though it makes no sense. They were a couple of uneducated ranchhands, country folk, if you plopped them into the 1970s Castro they would have felt horribly out of place and they'd have had a hell of a time getting work and paying the rent. Lureen says Jack wanted to have his ashes interred in a place called Brokeback Mountain, but she didn’t know where it was, so she buried half the ashes and gave the rest to his parents. Jack's Mother and Father. Jack remembers a time on Brokeback when Ennis simply embraced him and stood with him by the fire. Dad seems to be running the show, and he makes it pretty clear that he knows what Jack and Ennis were up to, saying, "I know where Brokeback Mountain is. The ranch’s owner has sold the place, and Ennis must move out this morning. One cold night, after much talking and drinking, Ennis decides to remain in base camp rather than trek back to the herd. Unfortunately, we had AnnE so we just got a confused, shallow performance which nobody could figure out. When Ennis confirmed that he and Jack spent a summer at Brokeback it was all confirmed. Jack admits he travels to Mexico for sex because Ennis can’t give him enough of a life. Jack and Ennis drink and talk in a bar, then head up the mountain and get to work. In a November 2010 interview on the National Public Radio program "Fresh Air," Anne Hathaway told interviewer Terry Gross that she actually has no idea whether or not her character, Lureen, tells the truth in the phone conversation in which Lureen tells Ennis how Jack died. Nowadays, "retesence" can be effectively managed with a one-a-day pill. Remember when AnnE shaved her head for Les Miserables and said she looked just like her gay brother? You're not the only one, R32. I loathe AnnE, she always comes across as a fucking cunt. His mother invites Ennis to see Jack’s room.