As He Lay Dying
PODHORETZ, JOHN
As He Lay Dying The late Mr. Estrada goes home to Mexico—the hard way. BY JOHN PODHORETZ If you go to the cinema to acquaint yourself with interesting and novel methods of torture and humiliation,...
...Screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga has said he wanted "to make a study in social contrast between the land that's south of the Rio Grande river and the land that's north of it...
...The same goes for Guillermo Arriaga...
...It's a mouthful, and that's a good thing...
...It's understandable that Jones would want you to see his film twice, but after two hours of watching him and his screenwriter, Guillermo Arria-ga, devise new ways to punish the movie's central character, many moviegoers will have to think hard about whether they might want to attend a movie ever again...
...I'm an open-borders guy myself...
...The contrast is that the land north of the Rio Grande is far too impure to hold the sainted corpse of Melquiades Estrada, who tells Pete with disgust that he doesn't want to be buried amidst all the "billboards...
...The shooter is Melquiades Estrada, a ranch hand and illegal alien who was shooting at a coyote to protect his goats...
...And when he learns that Norton has killed his friend and isn't going to be punished for it—the local sheriff goes on vacation to avoid the whole matter—Perkins takes matters into his own hands...
...You were way out of line, boy," says Norton's superior officer...
...And here is what happens to Norton: He is forced to dig up the body, causing a great deal of vomiting...
...Melquiades's best friend is Pete Perkins (Jones), the ranch foreman...
...Norton assumes he is being targeted and kills Melquiades...
...Well, they're wonderful, all of them, from strangers on the road offering food and drink to the Christ-like Melquiades himself...
...And we see him doing just that to a lovely young woman...
...He runs away from Perkins and is stalked by him...
...I prefer to use the Spanish title, Los Tres Entierros de Melquiades Estrada...
...BY JOHN PODHORETZ If you go to the cinema to acquaint yourself with interesting and novel methods of torture and humiliation, then have I got a movie for you—especially if, for an added bonus, you enjoy the thought that the person being tortured and humiliated is a law-enforcement officer employed by the government of the United States...
...She was attempting to escape," Norton says, falsely...
...One morning, Norton climbs out of his car in a remote valley with his Hustler in his hand when he hears gunshots...
...The point here, of course, is that Norton's treatment is cosmic payback—not for the killing of Melquiades, which was an accident, but for his own cruelty, racism, and soullessness...
...And more than a little political...
...But really, if Melquiades Estrada hated it so much here, all he had to do was jump on his horse and ride right on back to Mexico...
...Like Sam Peckinpah, the director to whose extraordinarily violent Westerns The Three ^'ur^als of Melquiades Estrada pays explicit homage, Jones loves the violence he shows so much that it makes his outraged depiction of Mike Norton's own cruelty a little hypocritical...
...When asked why he would saddle his film with such a difficult name, Jones responded, "I like the title...
...He is assaulted by a Mexican woman who helps cure him of his snakebite...
...And the Mexicans...
...love, a gorgeously photographed and haunting study of the border between Texas and Mexico and the people who live and work there...
...She's the woman he punched when she was trying to cross the border...
...That's all well and good, but through most of the movie, what you're seeing is a man being punished and punished and punished—and a director who is taking lascivious pleasure in the pain he is inflicting...
...He gets bitten by a rattlesnake...
...Melquiades died so that Mike Norton could live...
...And if you can't say that, you need to see the movie twice...
...And it's shot through with an ornery originality that seems to emanate from its director and star, Tommy Lee Jones, who is among the most ornery and original American actors...
...It's called The Three ^-ur^als of Melquiades Estrada, and it's not a negligible piece of work by any means...
...In the world according to Tommy Lee Jones, the Americans of West Texas are all corrupt, crazy, mean, or stupid...
...The torture he endures and the pain he suffers are, it turns out, intended to purify him...
...It's a genuine labor of John Podhoretz, a columnist for the New York Post, is THE WEEKLY STANDARD'S movie critic...
...He seems to have joined the Border Patrol so that, while apprehending illegal aliens near the border, he can beat them up...
...Perkins has promised to return Melquiades's body to his wife and children in Mexico if he died in the United States...
...He is handcuffed and beaten on three occasions by Pete Perkins...
...The film in question has a title so wretched that I can guarantee you the theater will be four-fifths empty when you go to see it...
...If I were going to change it, I'd make it longer...
...He leaves the man's body there, but is stricken with a sickening guilt that makes the gulf between him and his wife even larger...
...He is starved...
...The Border Patrol is, at best, incompetent and, at worst, evil...
...The subject of the movie's wrath is Mike Norton (Barry Pepper), a young Border Patrolman who has just moved to a West Texas town with his pretty and pliable young wife...
...Perkins kidnaps Norton and makes the Border Patrolman join him on a journey by horse to Mexico with the rotting body of Melquiades in tow...
...With a military crew cut, a joyless sneer on his face, a dehumanizing approach to making love to his wife and a copy of Hustler in his pocket for the long and lonely hours on patrol, Norton is a nasty piece of work...
Vol. 11 • February 2006 • No. 23
