[QUOTE=Crevalle]I think it's a sad commentary on our society when the media praises the movie as "courageous" when it's about a man cheating on his wife with another man.
As John Stossel would say, GIVE ME A BREAK! Too many people [I]want[/I] to like the movie because, in some twisted way, they feel more trendy. [/QUOTE]
I actually agree with you to a large extent. The saddest moments in the movie were pity for Ennis' wife.
But there's still some sadness to the situation beyond just her. Before Ennis was married, he was having a relationship with the other guy. He wouldn't continue with it, not because he felt it was wrong or anything, but because he couldn't live with what other people would think.
He ended up marrying this girl thinking that he could fix the problem instead of feed it, but ended up practically destroying her life in the process. In a lot of ways Ennis was a villain in the movie, and the film definitely doesn't try to hide that. It paints him as a sort of a tragic figure in a Shakespearan sense. At the end of the movie, when he sees his daughter has met a guy and is getting married, he contemplates the people he hurt on both sides of the fence, and the opportunities he's lost. But he also realizes that it's far too late to do anything about them.
This is what gave the movie some credibility to me. If it had been just a shameless justification of adultery, I would have written it off as soon as that became apparent. It is a film that has many different levels of interpretation and understanding. The main character in this movie, Ennis, is a victim only of himself, not really anyone else. And many others were his victims as well.
