Yasaman Rafiei 2017-08-09

The Three Burials is a great movie, mostly because of Tommy Lee Jones and his spectacular talents as an actor and a director, besides the touching screenplay of Guillermo Arriaga. The storyline was simple, inspired by a true story and right to the point: Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones) was a middle-aged rancher who became a friend of a young, decent, timid cowboy named Melquíades. He was more than a friend to him, he was more than a friend to everyone; he was the father figure. When Melquíades was killed by Mike Norton (Barry Pepper), Perkins saw it in himself to carry out his will to have a worthy burial in his homeland while dragging Norton all the way with him.

In my opinion, Lee’s acting was perfect. He was so attached to his character as if he was a rancher his whole life. Moreover, as a director, he worked on the details of every other character and gave them a back story, each of which grabbed the attention of the viewer. One of the most breathtaking characters was the lonely blind man with a radio.

The movie was full of beautiful sceneries and splendid sunsets, full of impressive rural landscapes. All these were mixed with the colourful interiors of the Mexican side. On the other hand, the two predominant colours of grey and white in the American interiors mostly were reflected sadness and sorrow. This is why Pete pictured Mexico as the land of felicity and dreamed of living with his, so called, lover over the border. However, Mexicans had an opposing opinion and did their best to cross the border into their dreamland.

In this movie, all Mexicans were depicted welcoming, noble, and kind. The only Mexican who expressed some reasonable violence was Mariana, who after saving Mike, poured hot coffee on him, hit him on the nose and said: “now we are even!” However, even Mariana did not hold back her smile from Mike in the next scene. Given these differences, Jones mostly took sides with the Mexicans rather than his own compatriots.

We can see three turning points in Norton’s character. At the beginning of the movie, he was a violent and narcissistic person who saw himself superior to the others (Mexican). He came all the way down to Texas with the idea of saving his country’s borders as a patrol guard and tried to be the wall who stops the “others”. He saw everyone who passed the border as enemies and easily moved ahead to beat them. His violent, cold, and apathetic character was not only evident in front of Mexicans but also appeared in his behaviours towards his wife. In the second quarter of the movie, his personality is humiliated by Pete. In Mike’s eyes, Mexican were considered as low lives, thus, Pete forced him to go to Mel’s house, drink water from his mug, and wear his clothes. Another way of looking at this is that Pete, the father figure, wanted to teach Mike a lesson “before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes.”

After crossing the border, in the last half of the movie, Mike transitioned into his new personality by familiarizing with Mexicans. When he saw how he can interact with the “other”’s culture, and how intimate they could become, the space between him and the “others” collapsed. He started to accept Mexicans and comprehended the depth of the catastrophe that he had committed. These all shaped his new identity. He started experiencing the hybridity on the borderland. In the end, it is time for Mike’s redemption; mourning for Mel’s death and seeking forgiveness on his knees. His cries “I’m sorry, Melquiades! For taking your life, I’m sorry!” helped him free his soul.

Maybe the best line of the movie was the last one where Mike asks Pete “You gonna be all right?” This emphasizes how he had changed during his borderland journey. In just a few days, his whole life turned around, he saw many ups and downs and learned the meaning of loyalty, justice, and friendship.

Yasaman Rafiei 2017-08-04

The movie is inspired by a true story when a businessman takes advantage of a troubled country to fill his pockets. He plans to overthrow an authoritarian government and replace it with another one to fulfil his interests, using military power and the fanatic Walker.

Walker betrays all principals and his lunatic, psychopathic, and pathetic character is exaggerated throughout the movie. Moreover, the use of car and helicopter (the earliest known helicopter is for 1906) did not match the year in which the story was taking place. Despite all this, the movie neatly depicted the true face and hegemony of Americans in Latin America. To them, Nicaragua was only a means of connecting two oceans. It is sad that the Americans insert the idea of fraternity into the society by telling them that “it is a privilege to be Nicaraguan”; insofar, the Nicaraguans mourned more for the death of their American brothers than their own people. They even blamed themselves for what has happened, “God Bless Americans, … They come to improve our civilization, to develop our country …but we killed them!”. This brotherhood didn’t last long and ended up abusing them in the worst way possible. In the final scene, when Nicaraguans were begging for their survival, they only received bullets as they did not carry any official American documents!

Another important theme of this movie is religion. The abuse of religion for the stability of power is sorrowful. Religion has been abused throughout history by Christians and Muslims, since the medieval ages, and the same trends are still going on around the world such as ISIS, al-Qaeda and even Donald Trump. Walker promoted Christianity and claimed that “God is on our side, victory is with us”. He even believes that God has given him the authority to do whatever he wants. That is why he says “we are here as a guest and we act with a moral dictated by God”. He is so sure and confident about his religiosity that he pushes back the one who is sympathizing with him over his lover’s death and says, “What do you know about God?” In this scene, his hypocrisy becomes obvious when he curses God when he is alone.

The Nicaraguans believed in him as their prophet who has come to rescue them from misery. “You are victorious, you broke cholera, you won.” The Nicaraguans see the image of God in him and he accepts it with open arms, “This is my destiny, I can’t lose”. However, as the story goes on, all these values are taken apart one by one and Walker turns into a political and moral loser. He claims to be a social democrat but finds the solution in slavery and dictatorship. Walker reminds me the Hitler’s words in 1936: “I am not a dictator, I have only simplified democracy”. Walker keeps on abusing the moral dictates of God until he becomes a cruel dictator.

In “Walker”, the main slogan of Americans was “we are here to unify this nation”. This lie had only one purpose to bring people together; however, liberals were their true friends and conservatives were, in fact, their enemies (based on the movie’s definition of liberal and conservative). To Walker, he himself was the Democrat, but he defined democracy as he wanted and ended up building a wall between the two political parties rather than unifying them.

Natives in this movie are shown as welcoming and friendly folks.  In the beginning, they guided Americans to find a path to Nicaragua, but Americans were cruel to them. Americans were cruel to black Americans as well, like the last scene of the movie when the faithful black American soldier was shot in cold blood as a response to his request to the Colonel to join them in the helicopter.

Walker is a smart man with signs of narcissism who is looking for an opportunity to get to power. He had some mental visions and once he reached them, he became a villain who is ready to do whatever it takes to maintain his position and his power. He had the illusion of being a representative of God on earth, who is born to be a winner. He couldn´t accept defeat and be willing to stand and die with the tag of Nicaragua´s president rather than returning to his country as a guilty American citizen. All in all, the idealist fanatic William Walker (Ed Harris), who lead the bloody and barbaric invasion of Nicaragua, under the influence that the United States has a moral right to protect its neighbours from all the oppressions, barely achieved his goal.