Initiatic American Journey

[chani]

I'm on holiday!

I went to a boring training session yesterday (in Geography!) and I had only 3 hours of teaching this morning, so as soon as I left my colleagues,  after a last lunch at our favourite Chinese restaurant, I went to the movies in the afternoon...The sky was grey, kinda rainy, perfect to spend some time in a theatre. Of course I could have done some X-mas shopping...Could have, should have...

I saw Tommy Lee Jones ' modern western, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Not a masterpiece, but definitely a good movie! I'm glad I saw it at last. There's some very interesting stuff in that film, and it shows that sometimes, in order to find a place you have to make it up. So actually a film about the Border and the contrasts that are apparent there, turned out to speak of the Frontier! A true western then, really worth-seeing.

Taking place in Texas and Mexico, in Mexamerica, the film is based on several dichotomies, about 2 countries, 2 worlds, 2 main characters, 2 states: USA vs Mexico; Modern Civilization vs Cow Boys' time and wildlife; Mike Norton (Barry Pepper) vs Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones); freedom/frontier vs being entrapped/border.

It opens with two hunters killing a coyote and finding out a buried corpse that the coyote was digging up when they shot it, Melquiades Estrada's body.

We learn through random flash backs that Melquiades was a "wet back" who came by someday on a horse and became a Ranch hand, and Pete Perkins' best friend. At the same time the film shows the boring everyday life of the border. Modern life is represented by the new houses, the cars, the weapons (sniper rifles), shopping Mall, and of course television and its soap-opera, but the old lifestyle is still there too, with its horses (vs the pet dog a woman had) and cow-boys and Pete belongs to that world. He believes in old values like friendship and loyalty, so when Mel's body is killed, he asks for retribution and wants to fulfill a promise he made. The beginning is a bit confusing because the scenes don't follow the chronology, but it's interesting because it shows how a death creates chaos and in a way we're as lost as the characters. As soon as the journey starts, the films finds a linear course.

The power of this modern western resides in the complexity of the characters, a depth that isn't obvious but played in a non-histrionic way, and in their controversial behavior. Of course Mike Norton is a dick at the beginning, cold, emotionally detached, unnecessarily violent towards the "wet backs" he caught as a Border Patroller, apparently even insensitive when it comes to his young wife. He does wrong things, like killing Mel by accident, and we want to hate him, but at the same time we can't help guessing he is so very lost, and feeling sorry for him as the movies and the journey progress. And Pete himself does a bunch of wrong/sadistic things in his need to do justice to his late friend. Tommy Lee Jones and Barry Pepper, whom I found so wonderful in The 25th Hour, are both excellent.

The supporting actors are really good too, especially the two women of the film, Rachel whose husband, Bob, runs a dinners and who sleeps around, and Lou-Ann, the young wife of Mike Norton.

There would be so many things to say about the voyage itself, a journey of redemption through pain (Mike has to do it bare foot as a true pilgrim!) that Pete forced Mike into, after he kidnapped him, simply to bring Mel's body to his hometown of Jimenez in Mexico while la migra is chasing them.

At some point Lou-Ann said his husband was beyong redemption and decided to leave eventually, not waiting for his return. She chose freedom unlike Rachel who remained untrapped, buried alive in the town and her marriage, simply because she doesn't want to escape. Lou-Ann won't become a second Rachel. But Mike isn't actually beyond redemption. To be honest that theme was not what I prefered in the movie. I thought it was a bit "heavy", and the biblical references were a little obvious (the desert, the snake, the Good Samaritan). But there are also very good moments and ideas and the film avoids certain Hollywood-clichés (yes Mike is saved by the very same Mexican girl he punched at the beginning of the film, but no love story ensues!).

The theme of the double is recurring in the film. Rachel is a middle-aged version of Lou-Ann, and her husband Bob, whom she keeps cuckolding, kinda looks like an old Mike. Same with Pete and Mel.  And there's one scene I loved. It's in Mexico, a very drunk Pete is in a café (that we can compare to Rachel's Texan dinners) surrounded by Mexican music and he gets to call, while a little Mexican girl is playing a Beethoven's sonata on piano. The whole musical ambiance creates a drunk state for us, cosy and sad at once. On the phone he asks her to join him because he wants to marry her, forgetting that she already has a husband.

And when he finds Mel's supposed wife eventually, she doesn't know the man on the photograph behind her children and herself...At the end of the day Pete and Mel was alike, they both borrowed a wife that wasn't theirs, dreaming of committment and of idyllic places...like Jimenez.

And of course the dead character is very important, not only because Melquiades Estrada appears in many flash-backs (the irony being that Lou-Ann might have had cheating on Mike with him!), but also because his three burials and the journey of his decaying body are the link that gives the film its coherence, and a true structure. It's macabre, but it's more poetic than gory despite the worsening condition of the corpse, or maybe it's poetic because it's gory, and actually it fits in Mexican traditional representation of los muertos. Compared to certain episodes of Six Feet Under (especially the one in which Nat buried his wife by himself), it was actually less disturbing for me.

The first time Mel was buried out of guilt by Mike to hide a tragic mistake, the second burial was decided by the cops, in haste, to get rid of an embarassing case...it was just a wet back after all! The third burial, the "proper" burial is done out of love, after a long horse back journey punctuated with unexpected encounters like that old blind man who listens to a Mexican radio wherease he doesn't even understand Spanish, almost dead himself, and through many sacrifices, among them a horse that fell over a precipice.

The last burial provides freedom and rebirth for every character, including the dead one (at least metaphorically through the "creation of Jimenez" and with Pete calling Mike "son"), a paradoxe that is even enhanced by the fact that dead Melquiades is actually taken back to Mexico, and it's by an handcuffed Mike who was a Border Agent and used to arrest Mexicans!

Good work Mr Jones and Mr Guillermo Arriaga.

Comments

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

One more week to go...

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Same here. *is jealous*

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

If you could see the 4 piles of papers (35 essays, 35 text commnetaries, 31 short tests and 31 maps) I have to mark during the holidays, you wouldn't be jealous!

[candlelightfrot.livejournal.com]

Marking HELL!!

Oh.. MAPS? I bought some old geologic maps at an auction recently. One was one of the first geologic maps published of the Midwest region were I live. I love maps. You should have me teach historical maps/geography to your students.

Have FUN!!