Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 28-March-04
Spoiler Rating: Low

Lone Star (1996)

"Forget the Alamo."

With these iconoclastic words, one-of-a-kind filmmaker John Sayles ties together the threads that make up his masterpiece "Lone Star," bringing an unusually potent and satisfying resolution to a tale of race, history, family, and tradition set in a south Texas town. Like all of Sayles' work, "Lone Star" resembles a novel in its emphasis on storytelling and layer upon layer of character and atmosphere. But whereas some of his movies lack cohesion and spontaneity (like last year's "Casa de Los Babys"), here all the elements come together in perfect harmony and to a definite end. "Lone Star" is sprawling and personal, sophisticated and elemental; it engrosses from the first and gets better with every viewing.

The movie begins with the discovery of a human skeleton that launches a 40-year-old murder mystery still rife with repercussions. The first man on the case is Sam Deeds (the ever marvelous Chris Cooper), a second-generation sheriff whose legendary father once ruled the county with a velvet fist. Wherever Sam goes, he cannot escape the institutionalized adoration of Buddy Deeds (played in flashbacks by Matthew McConaughey), a larger-than-life, pure-Texas patriarch who came to prominence by driving out the area's most notorious S.O.B. (Kris Kristofferson). When the solution of the mystery threatens to tarnish this hallowed reputation, Sam must grapple with popular opinion as propagated by the town's mayor (Clifton James) and leading black citizen (Ron Canada), and also with his own lingering resentment toward a man whom he remembers not as a hero, but a tyrant.

Sam's investigation into the ghosts of the past involves a tour of his Tex-Mex community in which generations of hope, ambition, and racial prejudice come to vivid life. In the golden era of Buddy Deeds (so local wisdom goes), folks understood and respected the segregation between whites, Mexicans, blacks, and Indians, precluding the squabbles and strained cross-culturalism of modern day (wonderfully illustrated by an argument between schoolteachers as to what "version" of history kids ought to learn). But it becomes apparent as the film progresses that every form of oppression, however conducive to civic peace, has its price. Lies must be told, secrets must be kept, tradeoffs must be made, and somewhere along the way, somebody's heart must be broken.

The hearts in question in this case belong to Sam and his childhood sweetheart Pilar, now a recently widowed mother of two (Elizabeth Peña). In a story that puts all other star-crossed lovers to shame, Sayles traces the history of the pair, how they became deeply connected at a very young age and were forcibly kept apart by Sam's father and Pilar's mother (Miriam Colon), a Mexican immigrant who built a prosperous life for herself as a restauranteur. The reawakened possibility of the lovers forms the core of "Lone Star" and provides the thematic link to another thread about fathers and sons involving a colonel at the local army base (Joe Morton). Having risen to respectable heights from a rocky beginning, the colonel believes in clean slates and forging one's own destiny, and in this he foreshadows the decision of Sam and Pilar that leads to the movie's notable conclusion.

The dual forces of the inescapable past and potentially unscripted future permeate the tales of "Lone Star," adding depth to Sayles' already rich imagining of a particular place populated by entirely lifelike characters. When all is said and done, the legends and lessons of Rio County, Texas, have become part of the viewer's history as well, resonating like memories of something complex and beautiful, and not to be forgotten.

Copyright © 2004 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.