Media Write-Up: Brokeback Mountain

Brokeback Mountain is really fascinating from the standpoint of this project, because it is
full of plenty of externalized homophobia and heteronormativity. This abundance of external
homophobia is, inevitably, what leads to the internalized homophobia – primarily in Ennis. Ennis
is shown, from a very young age, what happens to men who live with other men. His father
shows him a man who had been murdered for that very reason – and murdered violently. Ennis is
told from then that living as a gay man is unacceptable and will inevitably end in violence.

ENNIS: Yeah, I was, what, nine years old? My daddy, he made sure me and my brother
seen it. Hell, for all I know, he done the job. Two guys livin' together? No way. Now,
we can get together once in a while way the hell out in the middle of nowhere, but . . .
He was unsure of whether his father had committed the crime or not, but he described the
scene of a man who had been beaten to death and dragged around until parts of his body had
fallen apart – simply for living with another man. This was the first discussion of the fact that
Jack and Ennis needed to keep their “relationship” secret and infrequent.

It’s why Ennis (and Jack as well, but we are shown more of Ennis’ past) feels so inclined
to get married and have children and be “normal.” He fears the alternative. There are several
times in the movie where he is paranoid about being discovered – which comes to fruition when
Alma sees he and Jack. Ennis threatens Alma, who threatens to call for her new husband, which
infuriates Ennis and he leaves the home quickly.

ALMA: Don't try to fool me no more, Ennis, I know what it means. Jack Twist.

ENNIS: Alma.

ALMA: Jack Nasty. You didn't go up there to fish. You and him . . .

ENNIS (grabs her wrist and twists it): Now you listen to me, you don't know nothin' about
it.

ALMA: I'm goin' to yell for Monroe.

ENNIS: You do it and I'll make you eat the fuckin' floor.

ALMA (screaming): Get out! Get out!

ENNIS: And you too!

 You can see from his upbringing, why Ennis is so paranoid and so afraid of people
suspecting Jack’s relationship with Lureen – including Lureen herself, although Jack tries to
assure him that there is no suspicion.

ENNIS: You and Lureen, it's normal and all?

JACK: Sure.

ENNIS: She don't ever suspect? (JACK shakes his head "no.") You ever get the feelin', I
don't know, uh, when you're in town, and someone looks at you, suspicious, like he
knows. And then you go out on the pavement, and everyone's lookin' at you, like they all
know too?

Ennis is self-conscious about people just knowing about it, even though there is really no
reason anyone would know about their relationship. Jack brushes it off, believing that his
relationship with his wife is “normal” and no one suspects a thing. It seems as if Jack is saying
that Ennis is slightly paranoid.

JACK: All this time and you ain't found nobody else to marry.

ENNIS: I been puttin' the blocks to a good-lookin' little gal over in Riverton. She's a
waitress, wants to go to nursing school or somethin'. I don't know. (pause) What about
you and Lureen?

JACK (looks at ENNIS sharply): Lureen's good at makin' hard deals in the machine
business, but as far as our marriage goes, we could do it over the phone. I kinda got this
thing goin' with a ranch foreman's wife over in Rutters.

After the two of them fight several times over the years, it ends in a final confrontation:

JACK: Tell you what, we coulda had a good life together, fuckin' real good life, had us a
place of our own. But you didn't want it, Ennis! So what we got now is Brokeback
Mountain. Everything's built on that. That's all we got, boy, fuckin' all, so I hope you
know that if you don't never know the rest.

ENNIS: God damn it.

JACK: You count the damn few times that we have been together in nearly 20
years. Measure the short fuckin' leash you keep me on, and then you ask me about
Mexico and you tell me you'll kill me for needin' somethin' I don't hardly never get. You
got no idea how bad it gets. And I'm not you. I can't make it on a coupla high-altitude
 fucks once or twice a year. You are too much for me, Ennis, you son of a whoreson
bitch. I wish I knew how to quit you.

Jack believes that he and Ennis could have potentially had a good life together (which
Ennis clearly has a tough time believing). Jack criticizes the fact that Ennis was getting angry at
the fact that Jack was going to Mexico to be with men, while Ennis was trying to keep a
reasonable distance and be “normal.”

It’s hard for Jack to understand why Ennis was so okay with, “a coupla high-altitude
fucks once or twice a year,” because Jack felt like it could have been more. The last line of this is
one of the most well-known lines from this film, because it describes how Jack was truly feeling
towards Ennis. Jack was furious, but he still wanted to be with, be around Ennis – “I wish I knew
how to quit you.”

After this confrontation, Jack and Ennis don’t speak for some time. Ennis hears, through
some friends, that Jack had died – which surprises him – and he calls Jack’s widow, Lureen to
find out what happened.

LUREEN: Jack used to mention you. You're the fishing buddy or the hunting buddy,
I know that. Woulda let you know what happened, but I wasn't sure about your name
or address. Jack kept his friends' addresses in his head.

ENNIS: That's why I'm callin', uh, see what happened.

LUREEN: Oh yeah. Jack was pumping up a flat on the truck out on a back road when
the tire blew up. The rim of the tire slammed into his face, broke his nose and jaw, and
knocked him unconscious on his back. By the time somebody come along, he'd drowned
in his own blood. He was only 39 years old.

(ENNIS flashes on images of JACK being attacked by three men and beaten to death; one
of them has a tire iron.)

I think that this is, really, the first clear insight to Ennis’ fears of the relationship that he
had with Jack. The fact that his first thought, when told of Jack’s death, is an image of violence
and fear tells a lot of what Ennis was truly thinking during their relationship. I believe that Ennis’
father helped foster this - Ennis and his brother saw homophobic violence from an early age.
They were told that this is what happens when you’re “different.” Ennis was never sure if his
father was part of the group that killed the man, just that his father agreed with them.

The film concludes with:

 (After walking up the stairs, ENNIS finds the room and locates the pair of shirts hidden at
the back of JACK's closet; both shirts have bloody sleeves from the fight they had had 20
years before on Brokeback Mountain. ENNIS's white shirt is on the inside, and JACK's
blue shirt is on the outside. ENNIS pulls the hanger off the hook and cradles the shirts to
his face, weeping. He breathes in through the shirts, then exhales the words "I love you"
directly into the shirts.)

This is a heartbreaking conclusion to this film, because in the end, Ennis still feels the
need to hide away as he grieves, and he was never able to say, “I love you” to Jack directly, so he
must settle for holding old shirts and whispering it to no one.

Brokeback Mountain. Ang Lee. Focus Features, 2006. Film.