Are you being fair to Ennis & Jack?

Rating: 10/10 (3 July 2006)

I have no qualms with any of the "10 star" marks on this review section  as you can see I have given this film the maximum it can be awarded too.
However  The great majority of you, perhaps all of you, seem to be missing the point of the film  and in the meantime are doing a great disservice to Ennis and Jack.
"This IS the gay cowboy film"  in fact the film is, in its entirety, about the uniquely gay phenomenon of "the closet".
On Brokeback Mountain the guys are free, in nature  ie naturally, to express their feelings freely for each other unhindered and unseen. Hence we have massive open spaces, expansive skies (in total contrast to the claustrophobic atmosphere and spaces in Riverton and Childress). Yet even during these halcyon times we have events trying to drive both (yes both) back into the closet  the dead sheep is, for example, the reminder to Ennis of the neglect of his job; the first victim of their relationship; or, if you like, the sacrificial lamb on the altar of Ennis' sin. You can take your pick  yet all are designed to drive Ennis back deep within himself where he has been since birth.
It is clear that, unnecessarily, like some gay men, Ennis has hated himself since childhood. You can see it in the way he walks  you can hear it in the way he talks. He CAN understand the feelings he is having, he has had them all his life, though he has always feared to express them until his sojourn on Brokeback: it is his father who, tragically, unknowingly and only in a loving effort to protect his sons, imprisons Ennis into "the closet" for what can only can be guessed at is the remainder of his life. Jack is, simply, the more known case of the closet  at the right time he'll just walk out  he just needs the right guy! All the turbulent relationships outside of the central relationship (other than mother/son-father/daughter) are by-products of both of the lads living their lives in "the closet".
It is not important how Jack died, what is important is how Ennis believes it happened. Ennis picks the outcome that totally justifies his fears and the one that will secure him within his own closet.
Finally we have, to all intense and purposes, the two final, and most important, scenes of the film. Both have, literal "CLOSETS" central within them (Ennis finds shirts in Jack's closet; Ennis places daughter's jumper in his closet). The window at the end showing wide, open fields (what might have been) that is in total contrast to the existing closeted confines of Ennis' caravan.
If further tragedy was needed it is the people who matter most to the two central characters  Ennis' daughter and Jack's mother  who knew that they both were gay, all along, (Alma Jnr: "You're good enough") and are there to understand and pick up the pieces at the end.
Ennis only realises, too late, that love in the end is all that matters: " This Kurt, does he love you?" and finally releases one of the greatest final lines in a film  "Jack I swear .." Of course it's "Jack I swear I love you" but like Ennis' life the sentence remains incomplete.
The genius of Brokeback Mountain is not that it is a universal love story that just happens to contain gay characters but that it is, uniquely, a gay love story that has been made to appeal universally. However seeing this film as the former can only, in my opinion, be driving the lads back into that closet.