Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada - Tommy Lee Jones Shines as Director

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada 

This is a great film replete with suggestive symbols of grace, redemption, magical thinking, loss and the boundaries that are personal, cultural, and spiritual, not merely geographic. Ironically, when a dreamless, aimless Barry Pepper, who seems already past his prime at 30 becomes a member of the border patrol, he shoots an anonymous Mexican (Jones's blood brother so to speak)--and not even having the sympathy to try to help him--in fact, not having the humanity to even touch him as he lies bleeding to death--is more concerned about his job than another human being. In this case the Mexican to him is merely a type, not really a person. On the other hand Tommy Lee Jones, who sees the person behind the persona, is more concerned about the soul than the outward trappings of language or labels. When he discovers his friend dies at the hands of Pepper, Jones sits in his friend's modest shack just to feel his presence--to commune with his dead friend, as a means of coming to terms with his grief. 

Faced with the indifferent locals who would rather save their butts than save their souls, Jones takes it on himself to become the humanizing agent in a mercenary world. Forcing the border guard at gunpoint to accompany his friend to his final burial place, he traverses a bleak land that could be the Eliot's wasteland or the underworld. When he brings his friend home, he finds to his surprise, this beloved Mexican town is not what it is described to be. But as he understands that sometimes the imagination fulfills a purpose that life cannot, dignifies the death of his friend and redeems the humanity of the border guard. This film shows how human relations matter; how the electronic media are mere illusion producing devices; and even an old cowboy's body can find the fountain of youth by sticking to basic principles of human decency and understanding, and even the most direloneliness can be overcome even miles from home.

Michael Clayton: Analogies to the book of Jonah?

Many have remarked the opening of Michael Clayton is an example of exemplary film dialogue, particuarly the extended speech of Clayton's colleague, who has discovered that his life is a lie (so to speak).  Is this the raving of a bipolar sufferer or the message of a prophet?   First consider the speech:"Two weeks ago, I came out of the building, okay. I'm running across Sixth Avenue, there's a car waiting, I got exactly 38 minutes to get to the airport and I'm dictating. There's this, this panicked associate sprinting along beside me, scribbling in a notepad, and suddenly she starts screaming, and I realize we're standing in the middle of the street, the light's changed, there's this wall of traffic, serious traffic speeding towards us, and I- I-I freeze, I can't move. And I'm suddenly consumed with the overwhelming sensation that I'm covered with some sort of film. It's in my hair, my face. It's like a glaze like a- a coating, and, at first I thought, oh my God. I know what this is, this is some sort of amniotic - embryonic - fluid. I'm drenched in afterbirth, I've-I've breached the chrysalis, I've been reborn. But then the traffic, the stampede, the cars, the trucks, the horns, the screaming and I'm thinkin' no-no-no-no, reset, this is not rebirth. This is some kind of giddy illusion of renewal that happens in the final moment before death. And then I realize no-no-no, this is completely wrong because I look back at the building and I had the most stunning moment of clarity.

I- I-I- I realized Michael, that I had emerged not through the doors of Kenner, Bach, and Ledeen, not through the portals of our vast and powerful law firm, but from the asshole of an organism whose sole function is to excrete the- the-the-the poison, the ammo, the defoliant necessary for other, larger, more powerful organisms to destroy the miracle of humanity. And that I had been coated in this patina of s--t for the best part of my life. The stench of it and the stain of it would in all likelihood take the rest of my life to undo. And you know what I did? I took a deep cleansing breath and I set that notion aside. I tabled it. I said to myself as clear as this may be, as potent a feeling as this is, as true a thing as I believe that I have witnessed today, it must wait. It must stand the test of time. And Michael, the time is now."

Consider the resemblances to flee. He goes to Tarshish. God calls up a great storm at sea, and the ship's crew cast Jonah overboard in an attempt to appease God. A great sea creature sent by God, swallows Jonah. Inside the fish's belly, he says a prayer in which he repents for his disobedience and thanks God for His mercy. God speaks to the fish, which vomits out Jonah safely on dry land. After his rescue, Jonah obeys the call to prophesy against Nineveh, and they repent and God forgives them. Jonah is furious, however, and angrily tells God that this is the reason he tried to flee from Him, as he knew Him to be a just and merciful God. He then beseeches God to kill him, a request which is denied when God causes a tree to grow over him, giving him shade.
In Michael Clayton, Michael may be God's messenger who involves himself in rectifying the evil that his colleague has uncovered.

Cinematography in The Quiet American

Roger Ebert's Review of "The Quiet American" (Four stars)

Where the film lacks dramatic tension, Christopher Doyle’s cinematography provides a much needed visual fillip. A veteran of the Hong Kong film industry and regular Wong Kar-wai collaborator, Doyle also shot Noyce’s other recent release, Rabbit Proof Fence (Phillip Noyce, 2002). In The Quiet American, Doyle’s cinematography varies imaginatively from the destabilising, hand-held battle sequences to the static, Ozu-inspired interior scenes in Fowler’s Saigon residence. A particularly effective device, repeated on several occasions, has Pyle looming erratically into frame, an obliquely suggestive formal representation of the increasingly ambiguous status of his character.

John Huston on Film

The directing of a picture involves coming out of your individual loneliness and taking a controlling part in putting together a small world. A picture is made. You put a frame around it and move on. And one day you die. That is all there is to it.
--John Huston