Border patrol

Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cedillo) is dead. His friend, partner and surrogate father, ranch operator Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones), is devastated by Estrada's death. Perkins undertakes to find the killer, with or without the cooperation of Sheriff Belmont (Dwight Yoakam). Meanwhile, we see Mike Norton (Barry Pepper) and his wife (January Jones) ride into town. He's there to patrol the Texas-Mexico border, and the film is quick to show us how (in)effective he is at his job. These characters, as well as Rachel (Melissa Leo) who runs the local diner with her husband Bob, are all linked to each other in ways carefully designed gently revealed to us by Arriaga. Estrada's death is the event that brings these characters closer or drives them apart. Despite what the DVD back cover might say, "Three Burials" is not about Pete avenging Estrada's death. It is about what happens when Pete finds the killer, which makes for a more rewarding thematic experience.        

"The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" (2005), directed by and starring stone-faced Tommy Lee Jones, is clearly written by Guillermo Arriaga, he of other structural filmic adventures: "Amores Perros", "21 Grams", "Babel". The film's first two acts (or the "First Burial" and "Second Burial", as we are told) follow a disjointed plot that makes complete sense only once we're well into the film. Showing the events in this way, Jones and Arriaga add weight to the death of the titular character, making it more than just a plot development. The film is a Western set in the present day, and the genre, as seemingly unfashionable as it may be, is clear from the opening establishing shot of the uninhabited American landscape. The Western landscape instills awe and fear at the same time. We know that both death and salvation reside there.

"The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" belongs to the recent wave of revisionist, sometimes elegiac Westerns. Jones would appear in the monumental "No Country for Old Men" two years after this film, and Pepper would face Jeff Bridges in "True Grit" (2011). Thematically, "Brokeback Mountain" (2005) belongs to the same type of film. These new Westerns would not necessarily be set in the Old West but have similar character types and address similar themes. Where earlier Westerns commented on the fading of the "old ways" of the West due to industrialisation, for example, these new Westerns highlight the demise and reconstruction of the genre itself. "Estrada" contrasts the inviting and foreboding Western landscape with the mundane and equally deadly urbanity of Texas life, showing how one can kill physically while the other may murder the soul. A key theme underscoring the film is that of communication; there's a sex scene devoid of the usual audio-visual sexual cues that highlights physical intimacy as act of non-communication, while a blind man listens to a radio program he cannot understand since it's in Spanish.    

To discuss more would take us to deep into spoiler territory, since so much of the film covers the aftermath of Pete finding the killer and doing with this person what he must. What I can finally comment on is how the film takes a brave step towards its end, somewhat reframing Perkins while confirming what we might have expected all along. Subsequently, the film's last line resonates with sadness.

"The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" won Best Sceenplay and Best Actor at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.