The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada

''The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada'' (also known as ''Three Burials'') is a 2005 neo-Western film directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones and written by Guillermo Arriaga.Allen Barra
"Screenings: Now on DVD: A Brand-New Classic Western" ''American Heritage'', Oct. 2006. It also stars Barry Pepper, Julio Cedillo, Dwight Yoakam, and January Jones.

The film was inspired by the real-life killing in Texas of a teenager, Esequiel Hernandez Jr, by United States Marines during a military operation near the United States–Mexico border as well as the novel '' As I Lay Dying'' by William Faulkner, which contains the same plot premise and challenges encountered in the film.

The film has many flashbacks and sometimes the same event is shown from different perspectives.

Plot

Melquiades Estrada, a Mexican undocumented worker working in Texas as a cowboy, shoots at a coyote which is menacing his small flock of goats. A nearby United States Border Patrol officer, Norton, thinks he is being attacked and shoots back, killing Melquiades. Norton quickly buries Melquiades and does not report anything. Melquiades' body is found and is reburied in a local cemetery by the sheriff's office. Evidence that he may have been killed by Border Patrol is ignored by the local sheriff, Belmont, who would prefer to avoid trouble with the Border Patrol.

Pete Perkins, a rancher and Melquiades' best friend, finds out from a waitress, Rachel, that the killer was Norton. Perkins kidnaps Norton after tying up his wife, Lou Ann, and forces him to dig up Melquiades' body. Perkins had promised Melquiades that he would bury him in his home town of Jiménez, if he died in Texas. Perkins undertakes a journey on horseback into Mexico with the body tied to a mule and his captive Norton in tow. It is clear to Sheriff Belmont that Perkins has kidnapped Norton, and so police officers and the Border Patrol begin to search for them. Belmont sees them heading towards the Mexico border, but as he takes aim at Perkins, he can't bring himself to shoot and returns to town, leaving the pursuit to Border Patrol.

On their way across the harsh countryside, the pair experience a series of surrealistic encounters. They spend an afternoon with an elderly blind American, who listens to Mexican radio for company. The man asks to be shot since there is no one left to take care of him. He does not want to commit suicide because, he argues, doing so would offend God. Perkins refuses as it would offend God. Norton attempts to escape and is bitten by a rattlesnake and eventually discovered by a group of illegal immigrants crossing into Texas. Perkins gives one of them a horse as barter payment for guiding them across the river to an herbal healer. She turns out to be a woman whose nose Norton had broken when he recently punched her in the face during an arrest. At Perkins's request, she saves Norton's life before exacting her revenge by breaking Norton's nose with a coffee pot.

The captivity, the tiring journey, and the rotting corpse slowly take a profound psychological toll on Norton. At one point the duo encounter a group of Mexican cowboys watching American soap operas on a television hooked up to their pickup truck. The program is the same episode that was airing when Norton had sex with his wife in their trailer earlier in the movie. Norton is visibly shaken and is given half a bottle of liquor by one of the cowboys. Norton's wife is shown as she decides to leave the border town to return to her home town of Cincinnati. She has grown distant from her husband and seems unconcerned about his kidnapping, stating that he is "beyond redemption".

Perkins and Norton arrive at a town that is supposed to be near Jiménez, but no one in the town has heard of Jiménez. Perkins has some luck in locating a woman Melquiades indicated was his wife but, when Perkins confronts her, she states that she has never heard of Melquiades Estrada and lives in town with her husband and children. She does visibly react to a photograph Perkins shows her of Melquiades standing behind her and her children, stating that she does "...not want to get in trouble with her husband". Perkins continues onward searching for Melquiades' descriptions of a place "filled with beauty". Eventually they come upon a ruined house which Perkins feels was the one Melquiades had mentioned. Perkins and Norton repair the walls, construct a new roof and bury Melquiades for the third and final time.

Perkins then demands that Norton beg forgiveness for the killing, but Norton responds with obstinacy. Perkins fires several shots from his pistol around Norton until he complies, asking for forgiveness from Melquiades. Perkins accepts his hysterical grief and in passing calls him "son". Leaving Norton the second horse, Perkins rides away as Norton calls out and asks him if he will be okay.

The film's plot is very similar in some ways to Peckinpah's '' Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia'' (1974) as both movies include the transportation of a corpse in Mexico and the gradual development of a relationship between the body and its transporter, and in both films the transporter and the deceased had a relationship with the same woman. More importantly, Three Burials is an obvious allegory to the Freemasonic story of Hiram Abiff, who is supposed to have been the chief architect of Solomon's Temple, and who was murdered and buried three times. In Freemasonic initiation rituals, the murder and re-burial of Abiff is re-enacted and there are many specific references and allusions to this during the film.

Cast

* Tommy Lee Jones as Pete Perkins
* Barry Pepper as Ptmn. Mike Norton
* Julio Cedillo as Melquiades Estrada
* Dwight Yoakam as Sheriff Belmont
* January Jones as Lou Ann Norton
* Melissa Leo as Rachel
* Richard Andrew Jones as Bob
* Vanessa Bauche as Mariana
* Levon Helm as Old Man with Radio
* Mel Rodriguez as Captain Gómez
* Cecilia Suárez as Rosa
* Ignacio Guadalupe as Lucio

Production

An International co-production film between France, The United States and Mexico. The film was shot in the following locations: Big Bend National Park, Big Bend Ranch State Park, Lajitas, Midland, Monahans, Odessa, Van Horn, and Redford, all in Texas.

Reception

The film received generally positive reviews; it currently holds an 85% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus states: "Tommy Lee Jones' directorial debut is both a potent western and a powerful morality tale."

Awards and nominations

Cannes Film Festival

* Win: Best Actor – Tommy Lee Jones
* Win: Best Screenplay – Guillermo Arriaga
* Nominated: Golden Palm – Tommy Lee Jones

Belgian Syndicate of Cinema Critics
* Nominated: Grand Prix

Independent Spirit Awards
* Nominated: Best Film
* Nominated: Best Supporting Male- Barry Pepper
* Nominated: Best Screenplay- Guillermo Arriaga
* Nominated: Best Cinematography- Chris Menges

References

External links

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''The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada''
at The Numbers

"At the Border: the Limits of Knowledge in ''The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada'' and ''No Country for Old Men''"
Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism, No.1, 2010

{{DEFAULTSORT:Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada, The
2005 films
2005 Western (genre) films
Sony Pictures Classics films
2005 directorial debut films
American Western (genre) films
American nonlinear narrative films
English-language French films
EuropaCorp films
Films directed by Tommy Lee Jones
Films produced by Luc Besson
Films scored by Marco Beltrami
Films set in Texas
Films shot in Mexico
Films shot in Texas
Films with screenplays by Guillermo Arriaga
French Western (genre) films
French nonlinear narrative films
Mexican Western (genre) films
Neo-Western films
2000s Spanish-language films
2000s American films
2000s French films
2000s Mexican films