I truely like the full-shots from the helicopter/plane. Sometimes you can get a better understanding only by stepping back and observing from far away. However, the background music at some point makes me feel like this is a Transformer movie, and little bit over.

This is the last movie of this course. It’s quite interesting to look back and think about how the two musical movies in the 30th (Flying Down to Rio) and the 40th (Down Argentine Way), with the Good Neighbour Policy in power, tried to depict Latin America as exotic but at the same time not too much different from the North, so that the two continents could be allies and could work together for the region. Now in this final movie, the good and the bad are not too different as well. Although as most of the time the “bad” guys are the Latinos and the “good” guys are Americans, but in the end we discover that the “good” American is using a “bad” Latino to wipe out another “bad” Latino, and the “bad” Latino is using the “good” American to get personal revenge. It seems like a win-win situation, that the outlaw is terminated in the end, but actually it’s at the expense of turning the law-enforcement into the outlaw. And there is no going back. “This is the land of wolves.” How can lambs kick the wolves out?

We’ve been obsessed by the word “hero” in the past few classes. Some of us argue that there is no need for the existence of a hero in movies like, for example The Three Burials, in which I really don’t see why we should heroize Pete or Norton. However, this movie is clearly an American “hero movie”. Cops are the most common heroes in this world. So can we nominate Matt as hero? He is CIA and designs the operation to wipe out the Mexican cartel, but he doesn’t work by the book. Can we say Alejandro is a hero? He kills the big boss of the Mexican cartel who’s responsible for the explosion which killed two of Kate’s men and many many other crimes, but he belongs to Columbian cartel. Can we call Kate or Reggie a hero?  They work by the book, but probably by themselves and by the book they would never find the big boss. How do we define a hero? By the process of what he’s done or by the result of what he’s done, or something else? I don’t believe there is universal answer, and every one has a hero which match their own criteria.

So for me, what is true and eternal is that there is nothing eternal and true. The North and the South are “others” reciprocally, but maybe in the future they will become the same self once they find a common “others”, let’s say, ET?

My last doubt is, by crossing the border, either North or South, does it makes you “other”? or is it just a fantasy?

I really like Tommy Lee Jones because of Man in Black, and I see a very similar character as well in this movie.

This is a really good movie. I bursted into tears as well as laughters. I remember a movie in China some years ago, about a peasant who works in other places to earn a living, but he wants to get back to his hometown and get buried there after he dies, just like Melquiades, and the movie is detailed with how his friend manages to carry his body hundreds of miles back to home by lying all the way through, because in China, dead people must be cremated right away. It’s a comedy because of the lies his friend makes, but as well it’s very touching, about how a true friend can be.

This is a very different board area comparing to Touch of Evil. Los Robles is a small yet prosperous town due to the traffic of people and business (legal as well as illegal). Instead, what we see in “Three Burials“, I believe it’s more or less what the real situation is in the border between US and Mexico, where most of the wetbacks will choose to come illegally to the US. It’s vast and wild, but the same dangerous as Los Robles. I don’t see the blend between two cultures/people, but rather conflict and violence.

It’s movie which turn the common world up-side-down: a wetback who eagers to go back, a gringo who goes to Mexico illegally, a border patrol who is no longer the representative of the law but a prisoner and also enters Mexico illegally, and while it’s talking about the illegal immigration, it’s the other way round, from the US to Mexico. However, we know that the main theme, the hidden theme is still the wetbacks. Just this time we get to see from the opposite perspective, from the perspective of a gringo who’s friend of a wetback, of a border patrol and from the Mexican people, not from the politicians and mass media reporters.

Crossing the Southern border again changes people. Pete has got the courage to propose to Rachel, and Norton finally admit his sense of guilt. Or maybe “change” is not a correct word, because I believe Pete loves Rachel from long time ago, and Norton does feel somewhat guilty right after he killes Mel. Therefore, instead of “change”, maybe it’s better to say that crossing the border “enlarges” people’s true sentiments. So does it mean that crossing the Northern border makes people hide their feelings?

This is the second film in a row which talks about dictatorship. I never believe that all dictatorship is evil and has negative effects in all the aspects, nor that all revolution/democracy is good and has positive effects. It’s so much more complicated than merely good or bad.

Another very interesting thing is that, although at the very beginning of the movie Walker, the script says “It’s a true story”; however, it’s really hard for me to believe that Walker truely managed to flee Mexico in the armed insurrection like the film says, and even harder when Walker walks so pacificly in the battle in which the Americans unexpectedly win and overthrow the government of Nicaragua, in spite that this is a very serious movie, compared to the comedy film Bananas of Woody Allen, in which with all the parodies and exaggerations, somehow I do believe that some one in this world would actually do as what Fielding does when he is picking up porno magazine, or what he does in the subway with the two thugs.

Lastly I want to say something about interpretation. The two female protagonists, Walker’s fiancee Ellen and Doña Yrena, both are silent to some extent: Ellen literally cannot speak and has to use sign language and waits to be interpreted by Walker, meanwhile Doña Yrena only speaks Spanish at first and in order to be heard by the Americans she needs an interpreter as well (I was as surprised as Walker in the end to learn that Doña Yrena could actually speak fluent English, and I cannot understand this plot).  It reminds me of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s famous article “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, which we studied and discussed in the previous term. Some how it’s accepted as a consensus that the subalterns can physically speak, so it’s better to modify this question as “Can the Subaltern be Heard?” In the case of Ellen, she cannot speak by her voice, but she speaks by signs, and Walker does know the sign language, so he can “hear” her. However, at the mean time, he chooses to hear what he wants to hear, and interprete her words into the ones he thinks appropriate, so in this way he cannot, or rather, he doesn´t want to hear her.

        The funny part is that both of them do know that their words are not translated accordingly, they are angry, but they could do nothing, or rather they does nothing afterwards, especially Doña Yrena. But in the end, even though she speaks her mind in English, Walker still chooses to ignore, which may suggest that the reason Doña Yrena didn´t speak English at the begining is because she already knew that she wouldn´t be heard.