Lone Star

Year: 1996
Genre: Drama
Directed: John Sayles
Stars: Chris Cooper, Elizabeth Pena, Kris Kristofferson, Matthew McConaughey, Clifton James, Miriam Colon, Joe Morton, Eddie Robinson, Ron Canada, Frances McDormand
Production: Castle Rock

Lone Star is a slice of home-spun, football lovin', BBQ rubbing, Americana if written by Euripides. John Sayles, our intrepid writer/director has made a film at once so casually poignant and quietly radical that it runs the risk of being forgotten by the masses. The film is an obscura trifecta; radical, pensively paced and hard to find. Yet if you manage to get a hold of Sayles so-called greatest triumph, you may find a lot to love including the central mystery which is enough to fill the annals of a TV series.

Lookin' at you Cold Case (2003-2010)

Frontera, Texas, the border town in which Lone Star takes place, was once a rough-and-tumble hub for shoot first-types, crooked card games and illegal immigration. The most crooked in town was Sheriff Charlie Wade (Kristofferson) who wouldn't let anything pass without first getting a cut of the action. Forty years after the reign and sudden disappearance of the man, Sheriff Sam Deeds (Cooper) uncovers Wade's body. The main suspect; Sam's father and former Frontera Sheriff Buddy Deeds (McConaughey). Thus begins a seemingly straightforward cold-case that gets more muddled as more characters get involved.

Much of the story is told in inspired moments of flashback, which tend to blur into the present like ghosts out of the living past. Many side-stories are peppered in to give the story a mosaic or puzzle-like quality, with each individual part somehow clicking into a larger picture. These stories include the budding romance that might have been between a young Sam and Pilar (Pena) who now works as a school history teacher in town. There's also the conflict between Colonel Del (Morton) and father Otis (Canada) who sees the same mistakes he made with Del being repeated with his grandson Chet (Robinson). Finally there's the legend of Buddy Deeds himself, which towers over all like a shadow.

The story, through its structure evokes a sense of history, continuation and context, not all of which is pleasant. We as the audience are asked to experience cruel moments of racial hatred and prejudice which constantly segregates the lives of Frontera's white and black minorities, the Mexican-American majority and the lives of Native Americans largely represented by a single man selling knick-knacks on a road leading nowhere. Within the modern timeline, concerned teachers and parents complain that Pilar's teaching method includes conflicting historical accounts including: almost sacrilegiously, dissenting opinions about the Mexican-American War. "We won, we get bragging rights," screams one teacher while puffing his chest. Pilar defends herself by championing context over propaganda.

There are other examples of people trying to interpret, make sense or ignore the past. When Otis is not tending bar, he hunts down Black Seminole artifacts as a way of connecting to his ancestors. Bunny (McDormand), Sam's ex-wife conceals the hurt of their failed marriage with pills and football. Meanwhile Pilar's mother Mercedes (Colon) completely conceals her past, only hinting at it when she chastises those in her employ for not speaking English. Then of course there's Sam who partially out of naivety and partially out of a desire to pick apart his father's legend, thrusts himself into the 40-year-old murder investigation, despite never really wanting to be sheriff in the first place.

What he reveals challenges the conception of truth itself. Can it be known, and if it can, should it be known? Despite Lone Star occasionally ebbing into second act doldrums, the complexity of the story never bores. With an almost constructionist attachment to noir, Lone Star deconstructs the fences we all erect for ourselves all while telling a mesmerizing story about law, order, race and history. While John Sayles has always stricken me as an auteur whose eyes are too big for his stomach, in this case; Lone Star is a certified masterpiece.

Final Grade: A-