The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada with Guillermo Ariaga
Sunday, 1:00 pm, Culbreth
Director: Tommy Lee Jones
Writer: Guillermo Arriaga
Cinematographer: Chris Menges
Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Barry Pepper, January Jones
Running Time: 121 min
Screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga has called The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada a study of the emotional, psychological, spiritual, and social implications of having an international border running through the middle of a culture.
Texas ranch foreman Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones, who also produced and directed) develops an unlikely friendship with Mexican cowboy Melquiades Estrada. After the corpse of Estrada is found in a shallow grave near the Mexican border and reburied in the town cemetery, Perkins finds the border agent responsible for his friend’s death. At gunpoint, he forces the agent (Barry Pepper) to disinter Estrada once again, then sneak the body across the border to fulfill a promise and bury his compadre in his own hometown.
Inspired by an actual incident, wherein camouflaged Marines gunned down an American teenager who wandered too close to the border, Jones contacted screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (21 Grams, Babel) to craft a story portraying the full tragedy of Mexican and American relations along the notorious border. Filmed in West Texas, partly on Jones’s own ranch, and in Mexico, Three Burials captures the shared faith and despair of two societies that share a common land.
