The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)

Written by Nick Da Costa | Tuesday, March 4, 2008 |

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is a modern-day Western that seems to dismiss the moral degradation of the town for the whimsical innocence that still remains in the country surrounding. Here that country is Mexico, the homeland of the eponymous Melquiades Estrada, ranch hand and friend to the almost coma laconic Pete (Tommy Lee Jones). It is his death that has caused the fracturing at the heart of Latino scripter Guillermo Arriaga’s feathery yet poetic work.

In this fracture, past and present walk side by side, yet are expertly directed by Jones, dabbing moments here and there in the lives of cowboy Pete, the impotent sheriff (Dwight Yoakam), a diner waitress who’s screwing them both (Melissa Leo), and a new, brutish border patrolman, Mike (Barry Pepper), whose waif wife Lou Ann (January Jones) fears the boredom so easily found in this part of the Texan wasteland. It’s after the second and legal burial that new evidence comes to light as who was really responsible for Mal’s death, leading Pete to kidnap the patrolman and drag him across the border to fulfil a promise made between friends.

Beneath the gorgeous cinematography and sparse dialogue there lies the simplicity of a Western take on Paradise Lost. As soon as Pete and Mike leave the town, Liberty, behind them it is as if they are free of a Hell of sorts. Adultery, dulled poverty, and refusal to serve justice seem commonplace. The boredom that is rife, a sin. Something that scares the softly angelic Lou Ann so much, she seems almost relieved when the news of her husband’s crime gives her reason to leave. In contrast Mal’s Mexico is one where innocence has never been lost. Here all men and women are good, crossing the border only to find work and provide for their families. Somewhere in the midst of this is Mal’s true heart and home.

It is hard not to criticise Arriaga for this apparent moral simplicity; the people they meet, be it the man who helps them across the border or a woman previously assaulted and arrested by Mike who cures his snakebite highlight the rather embarrassing circularity to the narrative. However, the sequential burial theme, standing for illegal, legal and justly correct elevates the film with a smart social critique. It almost forgives the basic theme of redemption that carries both men through the rest of the film.

There is the same pleasure to be had, as with most great Westerns, in experiencing the quiet touches of mood or visual. The landscape the two men travel is almost alien in its visual might; giant cliff faces from which even a donkey may fall, a field of yellow wild flowers just beyond drifting sand dunes. There’s humour in this that would make Peckinpah proud, gallows thick as Pete sets the corpse’s head on fire to deter ants or drenches it in anti-freeze to prevent it spoiling too quick. Each a sharp contrast to the blandness of the town. In fact when civilisation does intrude, it’s in the screeching quality of a cell phone ringtone or the strangeness of an old black and white science fiction show on TV. Jones’ Pete soaks himself in it all, so touched that in a drunken moment he pleads with his lover to come to Mexico and settle down with him. But it is not to be. In fact nothing appears to be going as Pete planned. The apparent ignorance from anyone as to the whereabouts of Mal’s home leading him to an almost break in mind as he forces Mike to a derelict clearing.

Who exactly was Mal? What exactly did that town destroy? A surreal element pervades these final moments and though it might be said Jones remains his usual upright, stubborn self throughout, there is a sense that he is touched by the idyll they find; this place his friend may once have called home. It’s possible that for men who have lived or live still with sin in their hearts heaven is too much to bear. In Mike’s case he falls apart and wakes at peace and saved from death yet with his life destroyed nonetheless. Pete simply leaves with no indication of where he is going. Almost as if, like Mal, he never truly lived at all.

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