Films to Revisit: The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

three_burials I took another look at Tommy Lee Jones' directorial debut 'The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada' at the weekend - I was struck on my first viewing three years ago at the level of craft and understanding of how to tell a story, not to mention the meaning of the story it's trying to tell: one of how America (or any other protagonist) needs to grow up.  This time round, I was even more astonished - this film is so knowing about human relationships, loneliness, the power of economics to kill or liberate, and so delicate in its handling of what could otherwise have been either a horror film or a zombie comedy.

On the surface, it's a simple story - undocumented Mexican migrant worker Melquiades becomes inseperably best friends with Cowboy Pete, before being killed by a border patrol agent of the jock-revenge school.  Pete has promised Melquiades that he will bring his body home if such an event were to occur, so Pete abducts the agent and together they travel the harsh terrain from South Texas to the village of Jimenez.  Along the way, a world of sorrow and loss.  And one of the most believable redemptions I've ever seen.

My previous viewings had left me with compassion for the individual characters on screen - two formerly popular high school students later broken by the pressure to meet unworkable standards in adult life, a cop whose ED reflects his sense of swimming in circles, a blind man who has seen it all, and two men who just wanted to be allowed to be friends, despite the oppression of national borders.  But this time, I saw something else: 'The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada' is ultimately about the sins of colonialism and what it might take to learn interdependence. There's no sentimental closure here, just honesty about what guilt feels like, and how a desire for revenge can turn into letting go.  It asks an obvious, and enormous question: What are the responsibilities of friendship?  What can we forgive?  How can nations whose forebears have slaughtered each other bring the cycle to an end?  This film gets better with age.

Angels and Demons

angels-set02 Our Film Talk podcast review of 'Angels and Demons' is now on-line, with just the kind of vital theo-political comments you'd expect from myself and Jett Loe.  In other words, I had a cheesy grin on my face for the first hour, because this film knows exactly what it's doing: it's having fun, and taking us on a rollercoaster.  Then the priest-burnings began, and all of a sudden I was watching a remake of the most gruesome scenes in 'The Name of the Rose' - a smart thriller based on Umberto Eco's vast novel about symbols, language, and the meaning of religion, but with an uncomfortably literal portrayal of the way supposed heretics were executed.  There's far too much burning flesh in 'Angels and Demons', given its PG-13 rating.  There's far too much absurd coincidence, given its pretentions to be a story.  There's far too little humour, given how much fun its makers appeared to be having.

And at the end of it all, the questions of the interaction between faith and science that the film mentions deserve a better hearing than they're getting either in movies like this, or in the work of Richard Dawkins.  Though I suspect Ron Howard and Tom Hanks wouldn't consider themselves, unlike Dawkins, experts in fields they haven't studied.

P.S. [Spoiler follows]: Nice to see that the most heroic figure in the movie turns out to have been from Belfast.  Just before he turns into the evil force behind it all and sets himself on fire.  Ah well.

Weekly News Round-Up: I Read the 'Huffington Post', so You Don't Have To

Five News Stories You May Have Missed, or Just Can't Wait for my Analysis: 1: Miss California's Human Rights

It needs to be stated clearly that Carrie Prejean's constitutional freedom of speech right was not infringed, no matter what she may think, when people criticised her for opposing same sex marriage.  It may have been an unpleasant few weeks at the hands of commentators who disagree with her, but her rights have not been challenged.

Her constitutional freedom of speech right refers only to whether or not Congress can make laws that stop people from expressing themselves.  There is a huge difference between this and the potential for not being allowed to maintain her position in a rather archaic precursor to American Idol.  BUT - she's 21, new to the public eye, and should not be made into the scapegoat for the country's current paroxysms over sexuality.  And I don't think Satan had anything to do with why Perez Hilton asked the question.  If we really want our national conversation about questions of relational justice to be monopolised by gossip bloggers and glamour models, then I suppose we can't complain.

2: Death Humour

Wanda Sykes crossed a line at the White House Correspondents' dinner when she wished death on Rush Limbaugh.  This matters.  It also matters that the White House Correspondents are so friendly with the President that they take him out to dinner every year.  This matters more.  But this week it was revealed that the CIA may have misled the current Speaker of the House about the use of torture against detainees.  This matters even more.  Let me say it again.  Or perhaps I don't need to.

3: Nancy Pelosi's Truth Commission

On a related note, Nancy Pelosi could probably benefit from studying the history of what she calls 'truth commissions'. The name is far too emotive, it implies that Republicans were lying to Democrats and everyone else rather than acknowledging the bi-partisan nature of the bad decisions made in recent years, and evokes superficially-remembered notions of the South African Reconciliation experience.  If Speaker Pelosi really wants a meaningful investigation into the post-9/11 tactics that she helped approve, it would be helpful to use more helpful terminology, such as 'Commission of Inquiry'.  More than that, let's put everything on the table, not merely what Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld planned from September 12th onward. There's a much longer story about how we deal with the past that needs to be opened up - and it's unlikely to come in the form of legal hearings.  There is a serious conversation to be had about US national identity, the intrepretation of patriotism, and the interdependence of the planet.  A culture of denial has become the default - even Speaker Pelosi seems as if she's not saying everything she knows.  It's going to take more than congressional hearings to change that.

4: British MPs and expenses claims.

These stories are important and amusing but also getting a bit wearing.  Though I have to admit that the story of the guy who charged rent to another MP while also claiming for the mortgage on the property has a certain flair.  At the same time, Gordon Brown, a serious and compassionate man, whose commitment to such vital matters as poverty in Africa is probably unmatched by any other Western prime minister, has had the substance of his agenda hijacked by the expenses scandal and other more trivial stories.  He may now have entered the last few weeks of his premiership as a result.

So, changing the system in favour of one in which the public hold their elected representatives to account through an independent system isn't a bad idea.  But bringing down one government in particular because of the behaviour of politicians in general is.

5: Glenn Beck as Falwell's successor.

On Wednesday I heard Glenn Beck's radio show, during which a sweet-sounding woman called in to let Glenn know that she was praying for him, as he takes his stand against all the enemies of what appeared to be defined as crypto-fundamentalist privatised capitalism dressed up as the suffering way of the Cross.  She implied some rather unpleasant suggestions about the Obama administration, and particularly her view that our President might have friends in very low places.  And Glenn Beck responded, not by telling her how outrageous and absurd her suggestions were, but with a mysterious sentence or two about things he has seen and heard that he doesn't want to talk about just yet; ambiguous enough to the naked ear, but clear enough to the faithful dispensationalist Christians in his audience: Glenn Beck wants his audience to think that Obama is the antichrist.

I never previously thought that boorish + FoxNews = the latest in a long historical line of people predicting the end of the world and identifying Satan's representative on earth.  Well, if I'm honest, I did think that.  But I had always pegged Beck as a nothing more sinister than a not very funny political satirist.  Wednesday's show left me wondering if he is not actually the natural heir to Hal Lindsey and Jerry Falwell, whose playbook owes more the 'Left Behind' novels than Ayn Rand.  This is getting mysterious.

'Outrage', Part 3

Some questions arising from the release of 'Outrage'.  See earlier posts on the same topic here and here. It’s difficult to know how we should respond to such complicated matters.  I think this story raises at least six distinct questions:

1: What should the public response be to political representatives who endorse homophobic legislation or refuse to challenge homophobia, but who are later found to be involved in same-sex activity?  Is this simply hypocrisy, worthy only of condemnation and public ridicule, or could it be more complicated than that?

2: Sex in public restrooms is illegal; but shouldn’t we ask why such activities occur in the first place?  Isn't the obvious case that the existence of an ‘underground’ gay culture is the corollary of widespread societal homophobia?

3: The hidden behavior that well-known religious leaders and politicians have had recently exposed are more than simply a breach of the law or marital vows.  They are probably also examples of lifelong struggle by these men to reconcile their  sexuality.  In the senator's case, as a 62 year old man, he came of age in a time even more homophobic than ours.  Whatever the realities of his sexual orientation; whether he is a repressed gay man, or a confused straight man, or if he is the victim of a smear campaign, along with the public critique warranted by those who allow homophobia to prevail unchecked, he (and his family) also deserve our empathy. Should those of us who were moved by ‘Brokeback Mountain’ not consider that the characters who earned our sympathy in that film have  human faces; and that the faces of Ted Haggard or Larry Craig are human too?

4: If it is possible that the threat of outing a politician in 1995 may actually have killed him, why would it be safer to do so today?

5: We live in a society where it is still widely thought shameful or dysfunctional to be gay.  For a public figure to acknowledge that their sexuality even has grey areas is to invite disaster.  A few honorable and courageous people are prepared to speak up; but most are not able to.  There is a long (old) history of positive engagement by some theologians with sexuality in general; but religious institutions today frequently discuss sexuality only in the context of the challenges it raises.  What steps should we take to facilitate a substantive and well-resourced conversation about a positive theology of sexuality?  How can we talk about sexuality without merely problematising it?

6: What's your place in this discussion?