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RESEARCH PRODUCT

A genre and a limit: Across the Rio Grande border: A study of Tommy Lee Jones' 2005 film "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada"

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description

Attempting to answer the deceptively simple question of how far Tommy Lee Jones' 2005 film "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" can be described as a western will give an opportunity to explore some features of the genre, especially the geography of the Western, as well as study a few stories set in typical landscapes, focussing on the border between the United States and Mexico. That major locus in northern as well as mid-American imagination and culture is also the setting of a number of westerns and especially of John Ford's Rio Grande (1950), the source of our title as well as a fascinating inter-text to Tommy Lee Jones' work. A post mortem western, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada makes us cross the river and travel to the realm of the dead to proclaim the only eternity film can offer, hardly consistent shadows appearing and disappearing on our screens and memories.