The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

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The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
Film poster for The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
Directed by	Tommy Lee Jones
Produced by	Luc Besson Michael Fitzgerald Pierre-Ange Le Pogam
Written by	Guillermo Arriaga
Starring	Tommy Lee Jones Barry Pepper Julio Cedillo Dwight Yoakam January Jones
Music by	Marco Beltrami
Cinematography	Chris Menges Hector Ortega
Editing by	Roberto Silvi
Distributed by	Sony Classics
Release date(s)	September 11, 2005 December 14, 2005 March 31, 2006 May 25, 2006
Running time	121 min.
Language	English Spanish
Budget	USD$
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is a 2005 drama film directed by Tommy Lee Jones (debut) and written by Guillermo Arriaga. It stars Tommy Lee Jones, Barry Pepper, Julio Cedillo, and Dwight Yoakam.

1 Plot
2 Ending
3 Cast
4 Awards and nominations
5 External links

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Melquiades Estrada, an illegal alien from Mexico, is shot and buried in a shallow grave in the high desert of west Texas. His body is found and reburied in a local cemetery. After kidnapping the killer and forcing him to disinter the body, Pete Perkins, Melquiades' best friend and employer, undertakes a dangerous and quixotic journey on horseback into Mexico, with his captive in tow and Melquiades' body tied to a mule.

The film has many flashbacks. Sometimes the same event is shown twice, from different perspectives.

Mike Norton (Barry Pepper) and his wife move to the border area of west Texas. He is an uncouth border patrolman with a mean streak who roughs up illegal aliens. He has unemotional sex with his wife, without any regard for her wishes or satisfaction.

Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cedillo), a Mexican illegal alien working as a cowboy, shoots at a coyote which is menacing his small flock of goats. Officer Norton thinks he is being attacked and shoots back, killing Melquiades. Norton quickly buries Melquiades and does not report anything.

Melquiades' body is found and is reburied in a local cemetery by the sherrif's office. Evidence that he may have been killed by the U.S. border patrol is ignored by the local sheriff, Belmont (Dwight Yoakam), who would prefer to avoid trouble with the Border Patrol.

Pete Perkins (Jones), a rancher and Melquiades' best friend, finds out that the killer was Norton. Pete kidnaps Norton and forces him to dig up Melquiades' body.

In order to keep his promise to Melquiades that he would bury him in his home town of Jiménez in Mexico if he died in the U.S., Pete undertakes a journey horseback into Mexico, with his captive in tow and the body tied to a mule. His motive for taking Norton along appears to be revenge as well as to teach him respect and empathy for Mexicans.

It is clear to Sheriff Belmont that Pete has kidnapped Norton, and he searches for them; when Belmont sees them heading toward the Mexico border, he takes aim at Pete. But Belmont can't bring himself to shoot Pete, even though he doesn't like him very much. So Pete and Norton are pursued by the border patrol instead.

On their way across the harsh countryside, the pair experience a series of surreal encounters. They spend an afternoon with an elderly, blind, American man (Levon Helm), who has only Mexican radio for company and eventually asks them to shoot him since there is no-one left to take care of him. He does not want to commit suicide, because, he argues, doing so would offend God. Pete refuses, because if he killed the man, he would offend God. Tommy Lee Jones refers to this character as the "oracle" in the feature commentary, a classic component of tales of journeys and discovery dating back to Greek and Roman mythology.

Norton attempts to escape but is bitten by a rattlesnake and discovered by a group of illegals crossing into Texas. Pete gives one of them a horse as payment for guiding them across the river into Mexico, and to a herbal healer to treat Norton. She turns out to be a woman whom Norton had punched in the face a few weeks previously. Nevertheless, at Pete's request, she saves Norton's life. However, she breaks Norton's nose as revenge for his doing the same to her earlier.

The captivity, the tiring journey, and the disintegrating corpse slowly take a profound psychological toll on Norton. At one point, the duo encounter a group of Mexican vaqueros watching American soap operas on a television hooked up to the battery of their pickup truck. The program is the same that was airing when Norton had sex with his wife in their trailer earlier in the movie. Norton is visibly shaken and is given half a bottle of liquor by one of the vaqueros. Parallel to this, back in the United States, Norton's wife decides to leave the border town, ostensibly to return to their home town of Cincinnati. She has grown distant from her husband and seems unconcerned about his kidnapping, stating that he is "beyond redemption."

Pete and Norton then arrive at a small town that is supposed to be near Jiménez -- the town Melquiades Estrada claimed was his home. No one in the town has heard of Jiménez. Perkins has some luck in locating a woman Melquiades indicated was his wife. However, when Pete confronts her, she states that she has never heard of Melquiades Estrada and lives in town with her husband and children.

Perkins continues onward, based on Melquiades' vague descriptions of a place "filled with beauty". Eventually with Norton still in tow, Perkins comes upon a ruined house which Perkins feels was the Jiménez of Melquiades' earlier fantasies. Pete and Norton repair the walls and construct a new roof and bury Estrada for the third and final time. Perkins then demands that Norton beg forgiveness for the killing, after which the border patrolman is free to go. Pete also gives Norton his horse. As Pete rides away, Norton calls out and asks him if he will be okay.

[edit] Ending

The mystery of the ending is open to interpretation. A close look at the photograph of Melquiades' family shows that there are in fact two photos shown in the movie. One is shown to the woman he claimed was his wife, with Melquiades standing in the background and the bottom of a large tree visible behind him. This photo is also shown at the end of the movie when Norton begs Melquiades for forgiveness. A second photo is shown (sideways) when Pete shoves the photo into the face of Norton when they find Jiménez. In this photo, almost the entire large tree in the background is visible, and Melquiades is in a different position, farther away from the woman and her three children, and walking towards them. This is a nod to the magical realism that pervades much of Latin American literature from the time Spaniards first came seeking El Dorado. The dreamlike quality of human goals is most famously portrayed by the Don Quixote of Cervantes. In the feature commentary, Tommy Lee Jones seems to take efforts not to explain the ending in any way, nor to point out such details. However, he does say that the ending deals with "the mechanism of faith," and that "seeing may not be believing, but believing is seeing." In that spirit, the character Pete, believing so much in the fantasy of Melquiades, sees what his friend described: the beautiful village of Jiménez.