Cormac McCarthy, Camus, Peckinpah: Tommy Lee Jones
You can argue whether this very fine film is a Western. Purists would reject it because of its
modern setting but it’s a Western in the sense that a tough hombre takes the
law into his own hands, rides across the Rio Grande and does what a man’s gotta
do.
It’s the second time that
Tommy Lee Jones has made the promise to bury a dead friend far away. He really
needs to stop doing that. Last time it was Robert Duvall. This time it’s Julio
Cedillo, the Melquiades of the title.
Fine photography from Chris Menges and direction from TL Jones
The story is not told in a
linear way and is full of flashbacks: you have to piece the narrative together.
That reflects perhaps the confusion of
the participants. But this is not irritating. Certainly the film repays a
second viewing. The screenplay (Guillermo Arriaga, who had done Powder Keg and
21 Grams) is outstandingly good.
Southern Texas and northern
Mexico are shown to be the same culture with an international border slashed artificially
across it, with death and pain as a result. Perhaps we are shown more decency south
of the border. We are certainly shown a spiritually arid life north of it. The
life of the women in particular, Lou Ann (January Jones, excellent) and Rachel
(Melissa Leo, also very good indeed) is mind-numbingly boring and empty.
It’s almost a male love
story with nothing gay about it. The friendship between Pete (Tommy Lee
Jones) and Melquiades (Mel, as TLJ calls him) is touching and deep. Key themes are
friendship and alienation. It is said that TLJ gave the cast Albert Camus’s l’étranger to read.
Barry Pepper is outstanding
as Mike Norton, the oafish, trailer-park rookie border patrolman who is just an
overgrown adolescent but who becomes a man and comes, bizarrely, to care for
his captor. At the end that regard is reciprocated. Mike believes that Pete,
the sensitive sadist, will kill him and we, the viewers, believe that too. Yet
something happens between the two.
It's a Western alright
The landscape is barren and
beautiful and beautifully photographed by Chris Menges. The Marco Beltrami
music is atmospheric and appropriate. It’s not a ‘Western’ score in any
traditional sense (even if he did study under Morricone). The country/pop music
often played is just what people would listen to but the songs also try to say
something in different scenes.
One of them is sung by
Dwight Yoakam, probably my favorite country singer, who has matured into an
excellent actor. He is the unsympathetic, overweight Sheriff Belmont, who is
too lazy and prejudiced to care much who shot Melquiades, and if it was a cop
he’d rather cover it up. Rachel is his motel-bedroom mistress, not because she
loves the slob but out of sheer boredom.
Yoakam: excellent
Tommy Lee Jones directed,
produced and starred in the movie. Jones’s own performance is superb. TLJ
developed a type of Western character, a Texan tough as old boots, stoic, not
suffering fools gladly, keeping people at arm’s length, knowing, taciturn but
once committed, totally engaged. Now add a pinch of world-weariness. There you
have his Woodrow McCall in Lonesome Dove,
his Samuel Jones in The Missing, his
Ed Tom Bell in No Country for Old Men, his George Briggs in The Homesman.
Mr. Jones is a Texan born and bred, who graduated magna cum laude from Harvard,
majoring in English. His Westerns are subtle, penetrating, atmospheric and
elegiac.
Alienation
So, great acting, writing,
photography, music – a first class film which justifiably won the Best Male
Actor and Best Screenplay awards in Cannes.
Western male codes of
honor, harsh terrain, violence, a hint of madness: just a tinge of Alfredo Garcia. This is the kind of film
Sam Peckinpah might have made had he lived on and been reading Cormac McCarthy
– and Camus, of course.
Excellent review of one of my favorites. I have viewed the film three times and enjoyed it each time. After watching it the first time, I turned right around and watched it again because now that I knew what happened I could look for clues that I might have missed in the first viewing.
ReplyDeleteI'm thankful that Tommy Lee is making films. Without him the Western (at least good Westerns) might have become extinct.
I have heard that he has plans to film McCarthy's "Blood Meridian." I hope so.
Thanks!
ReplyDeleteYes, you definitely need to see it a few times to appreciate it fully.
Blood Meridian would be an enormous challenge to film but I can't think of anyone better than TLJ to do it.
Jeff