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Originally Posted by dissention
I was always under the impression that Ennis' fears of being "found out" by other people were playing out when he was being told about Jack's death. He seemed skeptical about the circumstances of Jack's death and imagined that he had been murdered with a tire iron, just like that man from his childhood, as a result of other men finding out Jack was gay. I don't think that's how Jack died. Ennis just doesn't know what he believes about Jack's death. I read the script and that pretty much confirmed what I had thought.
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Ditto this. The scene is an image that is in the mind of Ennis. I am eagerly awaiting the DVD, only because I want to freeze frame this awful scene and see if Jack had a mustache or not. Ultimately, it does not matter what happened to Jack. The point is that Ennis' fear of what he envisioned happened to Jack is what most prevented them from being together.
In the story, when Ennis hears about the other rancher at the Twist house, it is written "So now he knew it had been the tire iron." The movie and the story are certainly two different things, but then again, at the end of the story it is also written, "There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it."
So, the question is still there, but the answer does not matter.
Let me also say that after I have immersed myself in this story and this movie for the last seven weeks of my life, I have stumbled upon something I had not thought about in a long time.
PART OF ME IS CONSUMED WITH ANGER.
I am so f*cking sick and tired of the fact that so many people have to lie about their feelings. The fact that I have had to wait until I am 40 years old to see a love story on film about two men I can relate to creates a burning rage in me so immense that I hardly know what to do with it. I see people still talking about being gay as something that is somehow evil and wrong and having witnessed the psychic and physical destruction created by those attitudes I feel a simmering, incendiary resentment that could consume everything around me with it's force. It makes me want to break things, crush things, and be violent. It's not the movie. It's forty years of second best treatment, put down jokes, insulting television characters, hateful religions, and accumulated sadness for all the people out there who have suffered needlessly. So far, I have not encountered anything out there in the world along the lines of a jackass in a movie theatre making nasty jokes, and I have not witnessed any outright harrassment of gay people. But, I tell you what, God help the person who does this in front of me. God help them.