A few years ago, there was a memorable advertisement for Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey; a close-up shot of a pair of earth-ridden, hard-working hands. Shrewdly, the marketing types had used this bucolic image as a representation of Jack’s rich, full, stomach-melting flavour, yet ultimately, it also encapsulated the aesthetic of those good ol’ boys of Southern USA - where men are tough, men are men, and men can be men together…
To put an end to this lackadaisical deconstructionism (Take that! Webster’s Dictionary!), the advertisement was simply pinching iconography from one of America’s most lasting exports, the Western. Yet, as any man worth a spit will know, Westerns aren’t simply about men being manly (well, not always), they’re an exploration of the special bond between men. Yes, Brokeback Mountain recently made this point quite obvious, but where Brokeback exhibited (often overly) ponderous cinematography and men buggering each other in a tent, Three Burials takes a less ostentatious approach, it’s about the tender friendship between a man and a corpse.
Despite Three Burials’ rugged aesthetic, and the screenwriting of misery-monger Guillermo Arriaga (Amores Perros, 21 Grams and the forthcoming Babel) and the less than cheery demeanour of granite-faced Tommy Lee Jones (who also directs) this is almost definitely a black comedy. Take, for example, the lonely blind man, forced to eat slop for the last years of his life, pleading with Pete Perkins (Jones) to shoot him and end his wretched life (he doesn’t want to offend god by killing himself) or take Pete’s amateur embalming (anti-freeze) or his solution to prevent Fire Ants from eating his zombified friend (simply set his face on fire). It’s comedy gold.
Mike Norton (Barry Pepper) is a bigoted, xenophobic Tex/Mex Border Patrol officer with a possible ejaculation problem. He makes no bones about assaulting families of illegal border crossers; woman and children are not a problem for him. Yet he’s caught with his trousers down (that’s, literally) when he shoots and kills Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cesar Cedillo); as local police show their lack of interest for his killer, bereft hombre Pete decides to ratify his own, albeit twisted, sense of justice – making Norton dig up his corpse friend, drink his drink, wear his clothes, and drag him miles across the Mexican border for a final burial. Besides it’s black comedy, Burial… is a perverse road-movie; where Norton’s girlfriend (an impressive January Jones) remarks that her boyfriend is beyond redemption, Pete is cruelly trying his best to make the statement untrue. Sure enough, through dehydration, splinters, vomit, a snake bite and a broken nose, Norton slowly redeems himself both to the audience and Pete himself, eventually taking the place of the man he killed.
It is the dryness of Three Burials’ humour (it practically has vultures circling) and the short, touching scenes, as apposed to Brokeback Mountain’s elongated wankery, which makes it the more meaningful, engaging, enjoyable and often more touching of the two films. Tommy Lee Jones clearly relishes the chance to juxtapose of a man both friendly, funny, loyal as well as dark, violent and possibly insane; there’s a scene where he tries to comfort his deceased friend by brushing his hair. But as much as this is the Tommy Lee ‘Leatherface’ show, it would mean nothing without the excellently pitched counterbalance of “white-rat” Barry Pepper. Three Burials cleverly and expertly melds the baron desperation of Border living and gives it a crooked smile. Yee – and, wait for it – Haw.