The Lasso scene in the three burials of Melquiades Estrada ‹Crimereads

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The three burials of Melquiades EstradaDirected by Tommy Lee Jones in 2006, his board -patrol -evil weight Mike Norton (Barry Pepper) suffer for the countless crimes he committed against Mexican immigrants. In particular, the Texas Rancher Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones) revenues the murder of his dear friend Melquiades “Mel” Estrada (Julio César Cedillo) by transporting both MEL-Leiche and a bound Norton to Texas-Mexico Barder in order to correct it in his home country, and to enable Norton to allow Norton to make possible.

There is a point in the film where the men have to cross a river. Perkins pulled Norton behind on the horse. You reach a river and Perkins riding over it while Norton will run. Norton, who tried to run away twice (the second time that he leads to a snake bite for which he has to be treated medically by a healer in Mexico), refuses to cross the river, dig his heels (literally) and protest loudly. So, Perkins Lassos, dragged him, hurled him, hurled and howled through the water to the other side.

The importance of this scene in the film cannot be overestimated; The process of bringing Norton to the border between Texas-Mexico is one who slowly stimulates him as a retaliation for constant dehumanization and animalization, which he commits against the Mexican immigrants who endanger their own lives to cross the border.

Norton is thin – a trace, with sunken eyes, reptile husbandry and protruding bones. He wears a brown shirt with a snake skin pattern. If you approach the border and approach the protagonist closer to your goals, the wildness of the physical appearance of the villain and his wild, uncivilized tendencies will be more pronounced until it is forced to physically represent how it behaves socially – the animals that they initially started. It is no coincidence that Norton is bitten by a snake. When he crosses the river, he has reptil In He, literally cold blood in his metaphorical cold blood. It becomes the snake in every possible way without a complete mystical transformation.

In fact, when I was passed out after the rattling snake, a group of Latino travelers who just managed to stumble across Norton's body and the snake stumbled across the border. “Watch out, there is a rattling snake,” they call, but the snake that is dead on the floor is not visible – only Norton's body that hangs from a hole in the rock is, and it seems as if the call refers to it and not to the animal.

The toxic Norton is habitually fighting – in the film while catching a Mexican couple that the boarder had crossed, he grabs her with the couple (screaming “bitch” and hits her nose) until they are defenseless. Later he meets the woman again – in Mexico. She is the healer who treats his snake bite, and in a moment of reflexivity she tells the guide that she recognizes him as her attacker because “he has a face like a white rat” – before she hits him as repayment. If you flatten its nose, it removes its appearance of mammals in exchange for something appropriate reptiles.

Later, in the river cross scene, the guide bites to protest that rides through the river, similar to the snake that had bitten it. Here he is like stubborn cow Lasso and drags through the mounted Perkins like on the leash through the water. The consequence is the guide, also on horseback that pulls a donkey from a similar rope – and this visual part becomes Mike in an ass. But his beaten movements (achieved remarkable physical spectacle through Peppers) are elastic and fidget, in every respect in line -like.

In the last sequence of the film, he really saves his life after the healer he had injured by pulling out the poison and traces of the animal, and come to Mel's true graves. Perkins demands that Norton ask for forgiveness – and Norton, cry and begging. Here, in Mexico, he can turn back into a person and leave the beast he was in Texas.