Regarding the symbolism primer on today's "Daily Sheet" and the "Bookend Scenes",
DaveL mentions this one:
SPECK ON THE MOUNTAIN – NIGHT FIRE - Both characters …view each other across the vast upland meadows, and visually each appears as a tiny dot or "island" in the distance.
I loved the following paragraph in Annie Proulx's story where she wrote:
"During the day Ennis looked across a great gulf and sometimes saw Jack, a small dot moving across a high meadow as an insect moves across a tablecloth; Jack, in his dark camp, saw Ennis as night fire, a red spark on the huge black mass of mountain."
I absolutely loved the imagery and meaning of this when I read it and to my utter delight when seeing the movie, the brilliant screenwriters included this tiny "speck" in their screenplay and Ang Lee put it into his movie. To me, this seemingly overlookable thing in the short story that they found a way to be included in the film is, in my mind, a testament to everyone that they really cared about this and molded it into a work of art. Even now, when I see these two images in the film (they are reversed from the paragraph and separated a bit by another scene) I am amazed and gratified. Possibly my two favorite images in the film--the "Speck on the Mountain" (Ennis looking at Jack) and "Night Fire" (Jack looking at Ennis).
Meow.