The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada in Theaters December 14, 2005

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Sunday, 17 January 2010 03:44

Written by Laura Blum

Vigilante justice is alive and kicking in Tommy Lee Jones’ feature directorial debut, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada — even if its titular character is not. Played out along both sides of the Texas-Mexico border, this Western morality tale aims to bury anti-Mexicanism for once and for all.

As ever in a Guillermo Arriaga (Amores Perros, 21 Grams) screenplay, Three Burials torques separate lives into a twist that keeps turning long after the screen goes dark.

There’s Texas ranch foreman Pete Perkins (Jones), or “Pedro” to his best friend Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cesar Cedillo), and newly arrived border patrolman Mike Norton (Barry Pepper), for whom Melquiades is but a “wetback.” It’s a trinity of marginals who no longer fit in if indeed they ever did.

The spark for the film came from Jones, based on a true story of a Mexican youth offed partly in blunder by a U.S. patrol officer. Himself a West Texan who speaks a mean Norteño Spanish and formerly owned a cattle ranch, Jones helped develop and translate Arriaga’s Spanish-language script, a year in the making.

Cormac McCarthy is an uncredited inspiration, as readers of his Border Trilogy will recognize — especially The Crossing, where an American fulfills a moral obligation to return a dead creature to its native Mexico. Arriaga often cites another author, William Faulkner, as a major influence in his scriptwriting.

Three Burials opens with a mindless hunting spree to kill time and coyotes in a border town peopled by day laborers, cowboys, neglected wives and law enforcers. If there’s one law that’s observed here, it’s the law of unintended consequences. This hovers at the core of the story and administers tests of character to those who chose to respond.
 
Protagonist Pete Perkins feels at home in Spanish and Mexican culture, perhaps even more so than in his Anglo trappings. Where rougher necks on this arid frontier feel the threat of the alien other, Pete looks at Mexicans and sees people deserving of generosity and respect.

When he learns that Melquiades has been unceremoniously buried by (Dwight Yoakam’s) bigot sheriff, he has a Clint Eastwood/Sam Peckinpah moment and opts to avenge the killer, Mike Norton, under his own ethical code. With a gun to Mike’s head and obliging beasts of burden, he sets out to inter Melquiades in his hometown, as per his sacred promise to his friend. That Melquiades was screwing Mike’s wife (January Jones) is one of the film’s more picante Tex-Mex jabs.

The first station in Mike’s via dolorosa is Melquiades’s burial site, where he’s made to unearth the corpse. Slung over a mule, this reek of human flesh will soon assault Mike’s sensibilities, though never Pete’s. In a memorable scene bordering on camp, Pete repels invading ants from Melquiades’s decomposing icon.

Whatever the religious symbolism, it can’t be good. Is he the martyr you pray to in church? A shape-shifting jinn? Or merely godless nature taking its course?

Either way, Pete has a comfort level with his friend’s death that few American screenwriters could conjure. Having grown up with such transcendent rituals like the Day of the Dead — where graves of the dearly departed are dressed for their annual return to earth–Mexican Arriaga may have a head start on the rest of us in making peace with the other side.

Cinematographer Chris Menges nails the harrowing beauty of the desert deathtrap where Act II’s crossing unfolds. Along the way the narrative takes on a fable-like quality, passing into a neverland of the soul where guilt gets swapped for healing, redemption and rebirth if one’s lucky and wises up. Gringo guilt, we gather from the film, is especially tough to cleanse. But there’s hope, even in this gospel according to Jones and Arriaga.

Nobody does nonlinear like Arriaga, and Three Burials is a time-bend of champions. The three-part story is tossed to the elements, where it falls to us to re-assemble past and present scenarios as they settle into the P.O.V.s of their respective witnesses. To be sure, perspectives vary along racial and cultural lines. As characters pass the prism, they get new angles on one another and we get new angles on the sequence of events.

With a lesser cast all this eyeballing might not add up. Happily, the cast delivers. Tommy Lee Jones won Best Actor at Cannes and should also lasso an Oscar nomination for his performance, an ode to melancholy so haunted and poetic — yet virile — it alone justifies the price of a ticket.

Melisso Leo does a fine turn as a married diner owner who’s both frustrated and resigned to her fate. Vanessa Bauche plays Magdalena (a Cormac McCarthy name), a healer-avenger just vampish enough to suggest that Pete or Mike — or both — could find their way back to her in a sequel. In a mischievous wink, Arriaga pops up on screen to guide Jones’s lost quester.

At times viewers too may wish for help in navigating The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. But rest assured that it comes together in a beautiful and rewarding journey not to be missed.