February 22, 2006

FILM REVIEW
Border Crossings

The Three Burials of Melquíades Estrada
Directed by Tommy Lee Jones
Opens Fri., Feb. 3

By LESTER GRAY
Arts Editor

Just a gnat’s ass north of the Rio Grande, where barren describes everything from the terrain to the lives of the local inhabitants, actor and director Tommy Lee Jones sets his story of The Three Burials of Melquíades Estrada. The folks here don’t entertain many illusions; least of all that the border is or has ever been sacrosanct.

The ambiguity that attends this imaginary line drawn across a parched and gritty ground underpins a perverse and dangerous irony: the same nation that beckons workers to enter employs an armed border patrol to keep them out.

Mexican vaquero Melquíades Estrada (Julio Cesar Cedillo), having traversed the infamous divide, is hired and befriended by ranch foreman Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones), who introduces the younger and bashful man to the worldly pleasures of alcohol and women. Theirs is a special camaraderie, made even more so by the desolate surroundings. When Melquíades requests that his body be returned to his home in Mexico should he meet an untimely death, Pete accepts. Unfortunately, he soon has to make good on this promise.

Bungling Border Patrol agent Mike Norton (Barry Pepper), on watch between the cactuses with a girlie magazine, hears shots and is literally caught with his pants down. Incorrectly imagining himself under attack, he grabs his rifle. Sighting Melquíades in the distance, who had only been shooting at a coyote, he returns fire, killing the young cowboy.

Pete, although impeded by authorities who would just as soon see the whole mess buried with the corpse, tracks down Norton, whom he forces to disinter the body. With corpse and captive agent in tow, Pete heads south. Winding through foreign terrain with the law in pursuit, it slowly dawns on the ranch foreman that he’s not in Texas anymore. The arid land into which the bizarre trio treks serves as a blank piece of paper on which writer Guillermo Arriaga (21 Grams) skillfully dispenses allegory, metaphor, and dark humor, sagacity from a grizzled blind hermit (Levon Helm) and conversations with the decomposed corpse being just the most obvious examples.

The journey to make good on a pledge and exact penance for a killing turns into a redemptive pilgrimage for all three of the travelers, Pete most of all. As it turns out, Melquíades was granting a favor rather than asking one.

Jocularity notwithstanding, the director manages to convey a sobering, asymmetrical, and slightly incoherent perspective that brings blurry truth to subject matter that laughs in the face of definition. Unlike Syriana and Munich, two other films that deal with politics and morality, Three Burials tastefully suggests a bit of the mystical — this usually being more a feature of foreign offerings, in which it is applied like a seasoning.

Jones’ first effort as a feature film director is as laconic and unadorned as the characters he typically portrays. While the issue of injustice in the part of the country where he makes his home remains a heartfelt issue for him, there’s no preaching here; mischievous fun and entertainment are up front.

He graciously acknowledges influences from Peckinpah and Kurosawa for this work, and certainly the writings of Cormac McCarthy come to mind. Judging from the quality of this effort, others in turn will one day likewise cite Jones.