^^^ Very worthy read... (emphasis below in quote is mine...) Chuck, THANKS for posting, I'd not seen his review until now.
The final paragraph or so really captures how I felt the first few times I saw this final sequence. It was masterfully executed by both Ledger and Ang Lee to deliver a message, while missed by many, was clearly understood by those who've lived it. The "golden fields of wheat" is such a juxtaposition to Ennis' being at this time. I've always seen those final seconds as: Here's Ennis, who's resigned himself to living in a tiny trailer, staring out a scratched hazy window looking to fields of gold (what might have been)." It still gives me chills just to replay those seconds in my mind.
"... Again, Ennis poignantly takes time to do the buttons up on Jack’s shirt (0.35), and though from a strictly impersonal perspective it may seem an unhealthy and abnormal ritual, knowing Ennis as we do – with his chronic emotional dysfunctionality – there is a natural logic to him only being able to live in and commemorate his feelings for Jack, after he has died. What immediately follows is the moment of ‘catharsis’, when the camera moves to Ennis’ face and captures him in bittersweet tears (o.43). This, in a sense, is not only release for Ennis, but the audience too, after two plus hours of emotional torpor.
What’s so beautiful about Ledger’s tears are how genuine and unactorly they are. You’ll notice the brilliance in the subtlety of Ledger’s acting when at 0.45 he makes an ever-so-minimal nodding gesture. The nod and then the cleverly elusive “Jack, I Swear” (0.49) demonstrating how Ennis is acting out a form of sacred communion with Jack, also apparent from his attempt to personify Jack’s clothes by buttoning and arranging them carefully.
Ennis tenderly touches the photo of Brokeback Mountain (0.56) – the symbolic haven for his and Jack’s love – then Lee brilliantly finishes on a classic ‘western’ shot of an open plain as Ennis closes the wardrobe (1.00). Far from eliciting a sense of closure, I actually think that the vista is almost suggestive of Ennis’ colossal loneliness, trapped in a barren and desolate, emotional – as well as physical – geography, from which he’ll never be able to recapture the idyll of his lost love. (January 2013)" V.