The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005) – An enigmatic tale of survival, loyalty and life in the times of death
In this picture, Melquiades
Estrada is buried not once, not twice, but thrice. I’m guessing that’s pretty
evident from the title and if you’re wondering there’s more to the story, well...
Westerns
are meant to be about mundane times. Times of slow-pondering, times of finding
small pleasures and times of almost nothingness. Scorching suns, rattling
snakes and incredible horizons that go farther and farther. There’s an element
of survival that’s deeply ingrained in each character, wanting to survive the
sheer silence and the apathy that comes with it. What usually sets off these
stories in a new direction is a foreign perspective. An ill-fitted idea (in
the form of a person) walks into a dead-beat town and there you go. Here, in this picture,
not one but three outsiders set foot onto the deserts and we immediately see semblance of a plot getting created. A Mexican illegally enters a little
Texan town for work and befriends a fellow cowboy. A brooding border patrolman
walks in to the town along with his young wife around the same time. These
people don’t meet or run into each other on purpose but their lives do cross
somehow.
Guillermo
Arriaga (Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel etc.) is the writer and this one
too has his familiar themes and tropes (not heavy on plot somehow). Usually, his writing has co-incidences
driving things forward, almost as though the world’s (usually a city) a huge neighborhood, and these stories are dense with characters which leads
to a narrative of multiple plots, cross-connections and so much more. Three
Burials, however, relies on simplicity and fewer contrivances. The energy of the film is laid back and almost very dry. Another
familiar motif in his writing is the element of Three. There’s the DeathTrilogy, which is a pretty obvious proof, but the writer is known to play
around with the triptych construction (although Babel had 4 stories with the
fourth one branching out of the third) and find a resonating narrative
around a single-lined theme. Here, Melquiades Estrada is
buried thrice and has three children back home. Loyalty, another resounding theme in his films, is not a characteristic that's limited to humans. At many cross-sections, man is made to rely on a beast, to see if there'a reciprocation and that loyalty, be it in life or death is tested throughout.
The
picture’s pretty simple on plot because plot isn’t of huge matter in westerns. There’s a southern gothic quality to it; a surreal sense of awakening
among these characters because bizarre things happen to mankind
when it lives only on hope. Hope being the operative word in this story.
Melquiades hopes to find work in a place that has been inhospitable to most of
his countrymen, the young wife of the patrolman hopes to find joy in this town and Pete, Melquiades’ only friend, hopes to find his dead
friend’s home before he’s himself pulled in by the earth. What separates it
from the usual stories is the sheer bluntness with which it moves forward.
Tommy Lee Jones (who also stars as Pete in the central role) directs
this one, marking his debut, and is in such good form. He uses his own ranch in
Texas for the set-pieces and naturally gives himself all the liberty to make a film
that’s gritty, brutal and intense. But it’s his subtleties that are to be
admired here. Take the town folk for example. Their livelihoods are
interdependent, they’re bored and need each other for reassurance. But when
their stories do come to the fore, they come as footnotes. Footnotes to give us
irony and nothing more.
Watch
this picture for its slow-burn quality and deeply resonating themes of
alienation and loyalty. It might be a tough watch, not easily palatable in the
first watch because it’s slightly rough around the edges. The structure might
come off a bit haphazard initially but push through that because it’s all by
design. It’s one of those movies where little moments or single scenes create
such impact that other small factors don’t matter. In one incredible scene, a
blind man sincerely offers a travelling duo some food and shelter but, at a
later time, he also makes a deeply haunting request in return that summarizes
the mood of this picture. It’s one of those rare movies where scenes such as
this matter more than the film itself.
Note: Tommy Lee Jones won Best Actor and Guillermo Arriaga won Best Screenplay at the Cannes.
Here's the link to Roger Ebert's review of the film:
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