Cinema Arts Festival Houston 2009

The Western is an emblematic American film genre. Even though its demise is announced frequently, it resurges periodically, demonstrating its power to revive the myths and confront the realities of this country. And nowhere better than in Texas! Tommy Lee Jones is completely at home in the saddle as a first-time director and protagonist of The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, a classic story of friendship, revenge, and redemption, grounded in the contemporary environment of the Texas-Mexico border. The film is a tale of friendship between a Texas ranch foreman, Pete (Tommy Lee Jones) and a Mexican farmhand, Melquiades Estrada (Julio César Cedillo), whose tragic ending provokes a search for his killer, a Border Patrol officer. Guillermo Arriaga has created his finest screenplay, one that is as complex as the characters whose lives are intertwined at the border. Flashbacks construct the story of friendship and trust between Melquiades and Pete and their shared humanity, interwoven through Pete’s journey across the border. Pete is accompanied, not voluntarily, by Melquiades’s killer, a Border Patrol agent. Tommy Lee Jones’s performance is extraordinary, earning him a Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival (2005), where Arriaga also obtained the Best Screenplay award. Authentic in every way, filled with the images and sounds of the region, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is a parable, a Western, and a road movie, with a powerful dramatic drive that challenges the audience to confront the moral complexities of relationships across borders. Writer Ruben Martinez, speaking at the Rothko Chapel in September, cited this film as a particularly “extraordinary depiction of the borderlands and its people.”