Did Lureen know the truth behind Jacks death in Brokeback Mountain or did she believe the stor

This has been an ongoing question for years, and a question constantly asked to Anne Hathaway who always says she doesn’t know if Lureen knew or not, and she thinks they want the viewer to decide for themselves.

I always felt what she told Ennis on the phone seemed very rehearsed. She knew he was gay and that’s why they killed him. But she won’t let Ennis know that.

My ex felt she didn’t know and she was telling the story that was told to her.

And I know someone that believes SHE had him killed and set up get husband after discovering he was a homosexual.

What do you think?

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by Anonymousreply 49December 18, 2018 5:27 AM

she knew it all, he was a whore

by Anonymousreply 1December 17, 2018 3:33 AM

this is where AnnE first started getting bad press: Oprah asked her this question and she responded something like "well I think it is obvious" and Oprah said well I guess I'm just not smart enough to pick up on it.

by Anonymousreply 2December 17, 2018 3:34 AM

Yes, she knew...and it was an embarrassment to her. She tells a different story, not for the protection of Ennis, but for the protection of herself.

by Anonymousreply 3December 17, 2018 3:37 AM

If AnnE were a good actress, we would have the following:

Lureen is told the "official" story. She knows deep in her heart that there was something odd about Jack, but she desperately tries to repress what she feels because that's what Southern women with good breeding do. So she tells the official lie. It's a head versus heart issue. Her head tells her one thing, but her heart knows different.

Unfortunately, we had AnnE so we just got a confused, shallow performance which nobody could figure out.

by Anonymousreply 4December 17, 2018 3:41 AM

R4 so do you feel Michelle Williams and Anna Farris were better in their roles than Anne Hathaway in here?

by Anonymousreply 5December 17, 2018 3:47 AM

Linda Cardellini was good.

by Anonymousreply 6December 17, 2018 3:48 AM

[quote][R4] so do you feel Michelle Williams and Anna Farris were better in their roles than Anne Hathaway in here?

I think that the women's roles were poorly written in Brokeback Mountain. Michelle Williams comes off the best because she had feelings for Heath Ledger in real life and that was more real than what was on the page. I think that a better actress than Anne Hathaway could have made the role a bit less stereotypical, but there really wasn't that much to work with to being with.

Plus I think that Ang Lee was the wrong choice to direct the film. I think it may have come off as a better movie if it had been given to Merchant & Ivory, who themselves knew about forbidden love. I think it would be as compelling as Maurice.

by Anonymousreply 8December 17, 2018 4:04 AM

In a November 2010 interview on the National Public Radio program "Fresh Air," Anne Hathaway told interviewer Terry Gross that she actually has no idea whether or not her character, Lureen, tells the truth in the phone conversation in which Lureen tells Ennis how Jack died. Hathaway said that she shot two takes of the scene: one in which Lureen "knew what was going on with Jake's character Jack and that he'd been cheating on me with men and that I knew about the gay bashing," and one in which Lureen "had no idea... you know, it was a terrible accident with a car tire." Hathaway told Gross that instead of using all of either take, there were shots from both takes edited into the final movie, so she doesn't know what the director's or the editor's intentions for her character or for the truth about Jack's death really were.

It's also left deliberately ambiguous in the book, but Ennis thinks Jack was murdered.

by Anonymousreply 9December 17, 2018 4:05 AM

Maybe reading the story might help. "Brokeback Mountain" is one of several really good short stories in Annie Proulx's "Close Range" book.

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by Anonymousreply 10December 17, 2018 4:06 AM

R7 Anne Hathaway is so unlikable. Especially in that interview. She comes off like a snotty theater kid trying to put on the “I’m so soft spoken and sweet” role. Can’t stand her.

Michelle Willams is a delight and so talented. She looks so pretty here too!

by Anonymousreply 11December 17, 2018 4:11 AM

Ann can never win no matter what she does or doesn't do.

by Anonymousreply 12December 17, 2018 4:47 AM

Anne and GOOP should become roommates and do a reality show up

by Anonymousreply 13December 17, 2018 4:50 AM

R8 ang lee was a wrong choice? Shut the fuck up! He won an Oscar for best director for fuck’s sake 🙄

by Anonymousreply 14December 17, 2018 5:08 AM

I always figured that Jack was murdered. After he realized Ennis would never find the courage to leave Wyoming and live with him, he started satisfying his urges elsewhere, first with Mexican hustlers, then with the rancher. I think he was distraught by Ennis's rejection and had a death wish to some degree, so maybe he got careless enough that they were seen in a compromising situation, or maybe he got killed by some rough trade.

I don't think Hathaway's character ever knew or even suspected about his being gay (people didn't think such things applied to any but the most stereotypically obvious in those days), but she knew there was something wrong in the marriage and probably suspected him of cheating, just not with a man. She may not have even known the real circumstances of his death. The way she delivers the speech in the film, she seems like she's all cried out and delivering a canned speech she's given hundreds of times. When Ennis says that Brokeback was a real place, she has a delayed realization who Ennis is and what he was to her husband, but she's a Southern lady and not about to get confrontational on the phone. She sticks to the script.

I think however that Proulx intended it to be more ambiguous, that no matter what really happened, Ennis would only ever believe it was a gaybashing, just as he'd always feared.

by Anonymousreply 15December 17, 2018 5:12 AM

Anne is pretty obnoxious in that Oprah clip.

by Anonymousreply 16December 17, 2018 5:24 AM

R15 has the correct answer.

by Anonymousreply 17December 17, 2018 5:32 AM

If they wanted to be together and live together, why didn't they just go to California?

by Anonymousreply 18December 17, 2018 5:36 AM

r18 California wasn't all that much better in the '60s and '70s.

by Anonymousreply 21December 17, 2018 5:49 AM

[QUOTE]Plus I think that Ang Lee was the wrong choice to direct the film

I heard that he first ordered the role of "Jack" to Jackie Chan but Chan declined because there weren't enough stunts.

by Anonymousreply 22December 17, 2018 5:49 AM

Of course she knew.

It's obvious.

She knew in the short story, too.

by Anonymousreply 23December 17, 2018 5:56 AM

Yeah - it was obvious. Condescending Oprah. Her acting on the phone call shows that she did not believe the story she was telling but was repeating a party-Line story to a avoid the sordidness getting out into the public.

Anne Hathaway was good in that. Gylenhaal is the only one I thought was mediocre/poor acting - maybe 6/10.

by Anonymousreply 24December 17, 2018 5:59 AM

This film has stayed closed to my heart ever since. Always love it. CLASSIC

by Anonymousreply 25December 17, 2018 6:03 AM

I thought she knew. And I thought she pieced it all together about Ennius and Brokeback on that call.

by Anonymousreply 26December 17, 2018 6:04 AM

I'd forgotten that DL semi-fave David Harbour played Jack's rebound guy.

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by Anonymousreply 28December 17, 2018 6:08 AM

She knew he was a homosexual but maybe no soecifics. When Ennis confirmed that he and Jack spent a summer at Brokeback it was all confirmed. That little yelp she lets out when she finds out Brokeback is real is the best acting of Hathaway's career.

by Anonymousreply 29December 17, 2018 6:14 AM

"If they wanted to be together and live together, why didn't they just go to California? "

They were a couple of uneducated ranchhands, country folk, if you plopped them into the 1970s Castro they would have felt horribly out of place and they'd have had a hell of a time getting work and paying the rent. No, if those two set out for California they probably would have ended up on a ranch somewhere out in the boonies, where they could do the work they knew and be surrounded by the same king of evil yokels who thought beating some "queer" to death was a great way to top off a Saturday night on the town.

No, when Proulx chose a couple of gay Wyoming ranchhands for her tale of forbidden love in the modern world, she chose right.

by Anonymousreply 30December 17, 2018 7:03 AM

[quote]California wasn't all that much better in the '60s and '70s.

AYFKM? The '70s in particular?

by Anonymousreply 31December 17, 2018 7:15 AM

I thought it was obvious that she knew. But I am different from everyone else in that I see a glimmer of acceptance during her call with Ennis. That call was closure for her.

by Anonymousreply 32December 17, 2018 7:29 AM

She was not really sure whether her husband was actually gay until Ennis confirmed Brokeback Moutain is real.

by Anonymousreply 33December 17, 2018 7:34 AM

You're not the only one, R32. I see it too, but there's a lot of resignation there, too. It was like she'd known he was sleeping with men, but learning that he had a special romance and a favorite place from when he lived with Ennis added a layer to his life she hadn't been expecting.

by Anonymousreply 34December 17, 2018 8:31 AM

Even though it makes no sense. Anne Hathaway’s acting during the scene with Anna Faris implies to me she knew her husband was gay but didn’t care because it was another fuck you at society.

by Anonymousreply 35December 17, 2018 9:20 AM

Is r12 just messing with us?

by Anonymousreply 36December 17, 2018 10:05 AM

I loathe AnnE, she always comes across as a fucking cunt.

And she has one of those weird faces where she needs her makeup to be very different from usual, but it's almost never done so she's always extra fugly.

by Anonymousreply 37December 17, 2018 1:47 PM

She's a gigantic horse cunt.

by Anonymousreply 38December 17, 2018 2:51 PM

Yes- it’s quite apparent on the phone call- remember, by that time Jack was seeing other men due to Ennis’ retesence.

by Anonymousreply 39December 17, 2018 3:07 PM

[quote]Jack was seeing other men due to Ennis’ retesence.

Ennis retesed? Oh, dear.

by Anonymousreply 40December 17, 2018 3:22 PM

I didn’t mind AnnE until she got on stage to accept her Oscar, cradled it like a child and whispered “It came true!”

by Anonymousreply 41December 17, 2018 3:23 PM

[quote] Yes- it’s quite apparent on the phone call- remember, by that time Jack was seeing other men due to Ennis’ retesence.

So tragic. Nowadays, "retesence" can be effectively managed with a one-a-day pill.

by Anonymousreply 42December 17, 2018 3:36 PM

Getting back to the question at hand, it's never clear whether or not there was any "truth" to be discovered re. Jack's death (the truth would be more about his life) because it's possible he died exactly as she recited. It's Ennis who's convinced Jack was killed because Ennis has had a life-long fear of ending up like that murdered guy he talks about early in the film, the one he thinks might have been killed by his own father. It's the reason he won't go in with Jack on his proposal of a "little cow and calf operation."

by Anonymousreply 43December 17, 2018 4:16 PM

Really, r40? I mean, REALLY?!?

by Anonymousreply 45December 17, 2018 9:50 PM

I always thought that Jack had been set up to be murdered by his father-in-law, who had been humiliated by Jack at the holiday dinner and had probably tumbled onto the fact that Jack was gay. So he had a couple of hired hands take him out and then told his daughter the fake story about the tire iron or whatever it was, which really made no sense.

by Anonymousreply 46December 17, 2018 10:07 PM

It is open to interpretation. FWIW, in the story Jack's father in law died before he did.

by Anonymousreply 47December 17, 2018 10:47 PM

Remember when AnnE shaved her head for Les Miserables and said she looked just like her gay brother? She couldn't just say her brother, she had to point out that it was her GAAAAAAAAAAAAAY brother.

by Anonymousreply 48December 18, 2018 12:41 AM

R34 and r 43 are right on the money.

by Anonymousreply 49December 18, 2018 5:27 AM

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