(originally published in The Outreach Connection in March 2006)
Tommy Lee Jones’ The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is a remarkable directorial
debut for the 60-year-old icon, as assured as, and quite a bit more distinctive
than, Clint Eastwood’s best late films. Jones plays an aging South Texas
farmhand, whose best friend, illegal Mexican Estrada is shot dead by an
arrogant Border Patrol officer. Unhappy with how the local sheriff handles the
case, Jones takes matters into his own hands – he digs up the body, kidnaps the
officer, and sets off on a trek across the border, to return his dead friend to
his hometown.
The film’s strengths are varied and
considerable. It has the overall arc of a great eccentric Western, true to the
evocative power of the landscape and the stoic, taciturn hero, but bursting
with oddities – character quirks, strange incidents and parallels, the sheer
inexplicable. The film is laconic and sun-baked, but with frequent outbursts of
violence and malevolence. It’s a wonderfully evocative portrait of a small
town, eloquent about the compromises and excesses that rise out of its
all-suffusing boredom, turning people into either myths or beasts. The
performances, down to the smallest role, are magnificently well judged.
Little Fish
The movie has been somewhat overlooked - it
won a couple of prizes at Cannes, including for Jones as Best Actor, but never
gained much awards-season momentum here, and it barely seems suited to the
normal vocabulary of critical approval - I’m finding it very difficult to
select the right words to describe it. Most compelling is the way that Jones
keeps the lid very tight on his own character, and yet in the end the power of
his will and vision – although beyond our understanding – seems to transform
the film’s physical and psychological elements alike: it’s one of those endings
that simultaneously makes little sense, and yet as much as anyone should
possibly need. I suppose there’s something inherently indulgent and overdone
about these Western concoctions – constantly valorizing an essentially limited
patch of the world, of dubious governing ethos – but even more than the sexual
subversion of Brokeback Mountain,
Jones’ film shows there’s still much life in the pot yet.
Little
Fish, directed by Rowan Woods, sees Cate Blanchett
back in her native Australia as a former junkie trying to stay clean. The movie
revolves around her anxious mother and equally fragile brother; a former
football star who befriended her years ago and who she must now watch slowly
killing himself on drugs; and a suave gay drug lord. There’s a stock element to
these characterizations, but the acting is of very high quality, even if the
use of Blanchett, Hugo Weaving and Sam Neill gives it a slight stunt casting
quality. The film is most compelling in capturing the real economic and
emotional motives that drive the characters, and is most run-of-the-mill in
executing some standard drug movie double-crossing intrigue. The ending is
somewhat misty and unresolved, which may simply reflect the reality that the
upside for such characters is limited, but nevertheless seals the film’s
decidedly secondary importance. Seeing it the day after Melquiades Estrada, one can’t help reflecting how many filmmakers
think safely inside the box, albeit with much facility.
Dear Wendy
Lars von Trier is one director who is
safely outside the box, but may merely be constructing his own, disconnected
box, within which he slowly stagnates. His follow-up to Dogville, Manderlay, didn’t even open here – I saw it at last
year’s festival and found it highly provocative as a melting pot for American
sins and scandals, but it was very plainly nothing new. He wrote the script for
Dear Wendy and gave it to Thomas
Vinterberg (Festen) to direct, and
that one did open here (briefly). It’s another parable of the mid-West (set in
a small town – actually constructed in Copenhagen – that feels barely more real
than Dogville’s chalk outlines),
about a group of underachieving youths who develop an obsession with guns; they
are pacifists, but develop a complex ritualized gun mystique from which they
draw strength and confidence. This is a pretty good way of satirizing America’s
Second Amendment delusions, and the film’s peculiarity, along with an
undercurrent of fragility and near-sweetness, make it very diverting for a while.
It’s always clear though that it only has one place to go, and that’s how it
happens, ending up like a kindergarten version of The Wild Bunch. I would generally recommend the movie nevertheless,
but it’s no more than the sum of its parts.
Wayne Kramer, director of the quirky The Cooler, seeks to transform himself
into a punchy, technically proficient, yet still somewhat quirky action-master
in Running Scared, with Paul Walker
as a violent hood (but dedicated family man) spending a hectic night dodging
Russian mobs, crooked cops and so forth. The movie is initially off-putting,
but settles into a reasonably effective groove before losing it again toward
the end. The use of unadorned blue-collar settings is effective, and it does
have one rather stunning sequence involving a couple of child molesters; this
is really the only point where the movie comes close to what the title design
suggests is its sense of itself as a grim modern fairy tale.
Dave Chappelle
Night
Watch, a huge hit in its native Russia, is a very
similar viewing experience to Running
Scared, although in this case the set-up is supernatural – yet another of
those complicated crapolas about an eternal battle of light and dark, exploding
into our own world via the wonder of digital technology. I nodded off for a
while early on and never really picked up the thread after that, but I doubt
this made much of a difference. The movie is no doubt well executed, but it’s
the lamest kind of Hollywood wanna-be, with only the thinnest sense of local seasoning.
Dave
Chappelle’s Block Party is an exceptionally
enjoyable documentary about a 2004 concert organized by comedian Chappelle on a
Brooklyn intersection. I’ve never seen Chappelle’s show on Comedy Central (and
certainly didn’t know that he’s #43 on Comedy Central’s “100 Greatest Standups
Of All Time”) but based on what we see here he’s a sweet good-hearted guy (for
all his “edgy” material), and that goodwill permeates the whole movie. Surely
the whole affair can’t have been as impromptu as it seems, but the illusion
works, and the performers all seem liberated and happy. Highlights include
Kanye West, Mos Def and Erykah Badu – and your reaction to that list probably
weighs heavily on whether you think there’s a chance in hell you’ll ever go to
see this movie, but really, even if you think that stuff is just noise, you
should think about trying it out. Michel Gondry, so imaginative and distinctive
in directing Eternal Sunshine of the
Spotless Mind, is a much more self-effacing director here, and delivers a
great, subtly orchestrated package.
This week’s winner, Tommy Lee Jones, with a
good showing by Chappelle and Gondry. Let’s play again next week!
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