Reviewing Movies

Based on a short story by Annie Proulx. No self-respecting cattle wrangler would call a sheep herd a cowboy, sheep being despised for what they do to turf. Ennis Del Mar hitch-hikes into town, Jack Twist arrives in beaten down old pickup with a run-on motor. Both arrive with little more than the shirts on their backs. Ennis’ parents killed themselves on the only turn on a 43-mile straightaway, Jack’s are distant and repressed. There is nothing delicate about their love-making resulting as it does in black eyes and bloody noses. They would not be the first gay men to try to disguise their proclivities in marriage. Neither succeeds well in the deception Ennis’s resulting in divorce, Jack as Ennis is told in the version the widow was given while the actual events are portrayed on screen, died. The tragedy of their lives is that they live in a part of the world that is homophobic to this day and in a profession that is particularly so. Ennis ends up drifting from one dead-end job to another while Jack marries into wealth but with a father-in-law who hates his guts. The final scene in which Ennis visits Jack’s parents and finds his unwashed blood-stained shirt in Jack’s childhood bedroom is hauntingly poignant. Theirs was a life of missed opportunities but Jack ultimately died for the reasons Ennis feared.