Love is a force of nature, so is the fear of its consequences

Rating: 10/10 (12 February 2006)

My English is not good enough, but right now I *HAVE* to leave a comment (never left any comments before, obviously due to my limited English skills).
I *LOVED* this movie and I intend to see it again next weekend. It's a love story. Just a common love story. But it delivers well its point: how people sometimes don't allow themselves to be happy because of fears, guilt, insecurities, conventions and also HOW SOCIETY DEPRIVES SO MANY OF HAPPINESS BECAUSE OF ITS MERCILESS CONVENTIONS, PREJUDICES, INTOLERANCE AND AGGRESSIONS.
Then the movie confronts us with a perverse paradox. Jack (Gyllenhaal) and Ennis (Ledger), just like so very many people I know (homo or heterosexual), end up giving nothing but crumbs to the most important things in their lives. Crumbs of time, crumbs of love. That what is most important emotionally gets, in practical terms, leftovers. And this phenomenon described above doesn't do anyone any good. Take the wives, for example. Their unhappiness is almost palpable, so deep it is. What's it worth being married to someone who loves someone else?
Another aspect that caught my attention in this movie was: timing! It's no use whatsoever to decide to fight for something only after that something has been already irreversibly lost. Check out the last scene: Ennis (Ledger) alone, after receiving a visit from his daughter (who, by the way, loves him just the way he is). She leaves and he opens the door of his wardrobe where a dirty blouse of Jack's is hanging, and where we can also see a postcard that Jack wrote him. He looks sad, devastated, hopeless and aching so much as he mumbles something like: "oh, Jack, you know, I swear...", and doesn't finish his sentence. Promises! Promises that are now useless because the other is dead and you won't be able to live up to them anyways. Promises that could have been made earlier, promises that could have been fulfilled earlier, EARLIER, changing, MAYBE, the entire course of the story of both their lives... And of the lives of people close to them.
I understand Ennis so bad that it hurts. And at the same time I don't understand him at all. Perhaps Ennis' fears would confirm themselves and he would end up like that (mutilated, tortured and assassinated) guy his father showed him (as an educative lesson - ARGH!) when he and his brother were just a couple of little kids. Perhaps he would have ended up beaten-up to death like Jack (Gyllenhaal). Maybe, perhaps, maybe... We will never know. Ennis will never know. But the irony is that, again Ennis, the so-called survivor here, is probably feeling just as dead, tortured and mutilated as those who actually passed away for good. IF NOTHING ELSE, LOVE IS WORTH DYING FOR AND EVEN WORTHIER LIVING FOR. PEOPLE SHOULDN'T DENY THEMSELVES AND ESPECIALLY THEY SHOULDN'T BE DENIED THAT RIGHT.