The book complements the movie

Rating: 10/10 (26 June 2006)

First I read the short story and then watched the film, so it is difficult to understand why some people find the first part of the movie slow, it's not. Every second is important to the relationship that starts building between Jack and Ennis from the first time they set eyes on each other outside Aguirre's trailer.
Having read the short story first, I immediately understood Ennis nervousness and depression when Jack tells him they have to go back down the mountain. Ennis does not understand his feelings for Jack, he only knows  at that point  that he has never felt so happy before ("feels like he can paw the white out of the moon"). And it takes him one year to figure out that he should never have let Jack out of his sight, meaning that he finally realized what his real feelings for Jack were, but that by then, already married and with a child, it was far far too late.
If he had not been married, then MAYBE Ennis could have had a life with Jack. But he had already formed a family, and only had time to "earn a living" and was the kind of person that would never abandon a wife and child that depended on him, remember that it is Alma that divorces him. So the only thing left to him was to meet Jack every one in a while in the back of nowhere. The book also makes it clear that Alma divorces him because she gets tired of him going on his fishing trips and never taking a vacation with her and the girls, his refusal to get good permanent jobs and his propensity ignore her in bed.
So, even though the film is very powerful, it is even more so after having read the book, don't miss it.
And to all who didn't understand Ennis last words, they were: "Jack, I swear_" and the author adds: "though Jack had never asked him to swear anything and was himself not the swearing kind."