DIRECTOR/SCREENWRITER
John Sayles
PRODUCERS
R. Paul Miller
Maggie Renzi
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Stuart Dryburgh
MUSIC
Mason Daring
EDITOR
John Sayles
CAST
Chris Cooper (Sam Deeds)
Elizabeth Peña (Pilar Cruz)
Clifton James (Mayor Hollis Pogue)
Miriam Colon (Mercedes Cruz)
Kris Kristofferson (Sheriff Charlie Wade)
Matthew McConaughey (Buddy Deeds)
Joe Morton (Delmore Payne)
LaTanya Richardson (Priscilla Worth)
Gordon Tootoosis (Wesley Birdsong)
Frances McDormand (Bunny)
MPAA rating: R
Running
time: 135m
U.S. release: June 21, 1996
Video availability: VHS - DVD
|
Lone
Star begins with a
skeleton in the sand. Some people in the Texas border town of
Frontera wish it had stayed buried; others, like the decent Sheriff
Sam Deeds, wonder what secrets the bones can tell the living.
Deeds, a man of intelligence and compassion, recognizes the remains
as a metaphor for the skeleton in Frontera's closet -- evidence
of past racism and violence bleeding into the present. It may
also be a skeleton in his father's closet.
Leave it to John Sayles to elevate this mystery to an essay on
the larger American mysteries. Sayles, a novelist turned screenwriter
turned director, spent the first half of his filmmaking career
using the camera as an extension of his typewriter. His work
was sharply written but technically rough and awkward. Somewhere
around City of Hope (1991), Sayles became a born-again
director; his subsequent efforts, Passion Fish and The
Secret of Roan Inish, were near-perfection. Lone Star
is the latest chapter in Sayles' ongoing great American novel.
Sheriff Deeds (Chris Cooper, the star of Sayles' ambitious but
wearying Matewan) is a second-generation lawman, and the
Frontera natives never let him forget it. His father, the legendary
Buddy Deeds (Matthew McConaughey), was the town's previous sheriff;
Buddy got off to a good start -- so goes the story -- by expelling
his own predecessor, the corrupt, racist, and brutal Charley
Wade (Kris Kristofferson). Sheriff Deeds suspects that the sun-bleached
bones may be Charley's, and that Buddy was the one who gave the
corpse its dry funeral.
That would be enough for one reasonably compelling movie. But
Sayles digs deeper. Lone Star, it turns out, is only marginally
"about" Charley and Buddy and the skeleton, in terms
of the screen time they get (Sayles' miserly distribution of
the Charley/Buddy scenes, masterfully played by Kristofferson
and McConaughey, is his only slight misstep). On another level,
the movie is very much about those men -- what they represent,
the impact their lives and actions had on the people of Frontera.
Settling into the dust of the town, Sayles gives us Frontera
as a web of emotions and memories. Every character -- the cheerful
Mayor Hollis (Clifton James), the black bar owner Otis (Ron Canada),
Sheriff Deeds' high school love Pilar (Elizabeth Peña)
-- has roots that point back to Charley or Buddy, like vines
seeking blood instead of water. Sayles doesn't pin name-tags
on these people, and you do have to pay attention. But the movie
repays your effort with interest.
Having said all that, I don't feel that Lone Star is a
masterpiece (though it is one of the year's best) or Sayles'
best work; I lean towards his Lianna, Eight Men Out,
and Passion Fish. This movie, subtle and enthralling as
it is, ultimately saddens me: Hollywood should be releasing a
Lone Star (or a Fargo)
every month. That's not John Sayles' fault; he's doing his part.
Lone Star shows him at his most reflective. And he has
a powerful image in that skeleton: the ugly past grinning up
at the present, haunting the future. |
