The last shot of the film says it all: we are all staring down the cold dark barrel of a gun. A Western/Action movie cliche? Perhaps, like death is a cliche'.
I think it is Pechkinpah's tormented and divided nature that we see through the lense of Warren Oates' character, Bennie. It's a hard life when you are attracted to the darker grittier side of life (booze, broads, a neverending nightlife that always ends too soon) and also possess a fully functioning sense of justice and empathy, a higher conscience. Maybe I'm so fond of this movie because I too have a simliar divided nature.
This film does more than simply entertain an audience, although it is also not particularly informative or evokes some deep scholarship, unless it's scholarship of the bone. But it is moving, enthralls, disgusts, and oddly touches the watcher amid the swirling dry mexican dirt and mostly vile characters. There is no good or evil displayed here. As close as we get is some men are just emptier than others.
From the impetus character, El Jefe, who has all the power to trigger these violent events, and the stunted moral outrage of a father whose daughter is impregnated out of wedlock, to Bennie who finds love and just as quickly loses it, and who spends the last quarter of the film having a surreal conversation and escapade with a severed head, to the titular character whom we never see in a single scene alive, who can represent either the ghost of lost love or the haunt of uncontrolled lust-- no one has the purity of evil or good. Even Kris Kristofferson's biker character falls out of his role of evil rapist, and moves away from Elita, cowering in a weirdly pensive scene by the rocks, to allow her to come to him! We look for a personification of evil throughout this movie and find only blankness or despair. Maybe the cold, calculating Sappensly and Quill approach the film's closest examples of pure evil, and some could argue El Jefe, who has the funds and the power and the will to set this bizarre treasure hunt into motion, is an evil man. But you cannot say the man has no honor: he welcomes Bennie as a hero and has every intention of paying him that cool million in trade for Garcia's head, and letting him go safely away. But Bennie is blinded by a moral outrage of his own; he cannot let Elita's murder go unavenged, even after killing the two bounty hunters directly responsible for it. To Bennie, there is a higher responsibility. If not God, then why not a God of men on Earth, the wealthy, king of his own mexican town, El Jefe.
Another curiously moving aspect of this film is the change seen and felt in Elita. She moves from a plaything and brothel singer and whore to at last finding-- her own Quest-- redemption through true love. It is not the painful yearning lust she had for Alfredo Garcia, or any other man. It is calmer, and deeper. A way to find her lost innocence, to have like any good Catholic girl, a wedding in a church. Of course as events unfold, she must die. In a way more true than any silly chick-flick romance movie my ex-fiance made me watch with her, Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia, is a beautiful love story. It resonates through the spiralling, eye-stinging sierra sand of brutal Mexico.
After, The Wild Bunch, this is Peckinpah's best movie. And quite possibly his most innocent and brutal, at the same time. God help the world if Hollywood ever attempts to make a remake of this great film.
I think it is Pechkinpah's tormented and divided nature that we see through the lense of Warren Oates' character, Bennie. It's a hard life when you are attracted to the darker grittier side of life (booze, broads, a neverending nightlife that always ends too soon) and also possess a fully functioning sense of justice and empathy, a higher conscience. Maybe I'm so fond of this movie because I too have a simliar divided nature.
This film does more than simply entertain an audience, although it is also not particularly informative or evokes some deep scholarship, unless it's scholarship of the bone. But it is moving, enthralls, disgusts, and oddly touches the watcher amid the swirling dry mexican dirt and mostly vile characters. There is no good or evil displayed here. As close as we get is some men are just emptier than others.
From the impetus character, El Jefe, who has all the power to trigger these violent events, and the stunted moral outrage of a father whose daughter is impregnated out of wedlock, to Bennie who finds love and just as quickly loses it, and who spends the last quarter of the film having a surreal conversation and escapade with a severed head, to the titular character whom we never see in a single scene alive, who can represent either the ghost of lost love or the haunt of uncontrolled lust-- no one has the purity of evil or good. Even Kris Kristofferson's biker character falls out of his role of evil rapist, and moves away from Elita, cowering in a weirdly pensive scene by the rocks, to allow her to come to him! We look for a personification of evil throughout this movie and find only blankness or despair. Maybe the cold, calculating Sappensly and Quill approach the film's closest examples of pure evil, and some could argue El Jefe, who has the funds and the power and the will to set this bizarre treasure hunt into motion, is an evil man. But you cannot say the man has no honor: he welcomes Bennie as a hero and has every intention of paying him that cool million in trade for Garcia's head, and letting him go safely away. But Bennie is blinded by a moral outrage of his own; he cannot let Elita's murder go unavenged, even after killing the two bounty hunters directly responsible for it. To Bennie, there is a higher responsibility. If not God, then why not a God of men on Earth, the wealthy, king of his own mexican town, El Jefe.
Another curiously moving aspect of this film is the change seen and felt in Elita. She moves from a plaything and brothel singer and whore to at last finding-- her own Quest-- redemption through true love. It is not the painful yearning lust she had for Alfredo Garcia, or any other man. It is calmer, and deeper. A way to find her lost innocence, to have like any good Catholic girl, a wedding in a church. Of course as events unfold, she must die. In a way more true than any silly chick-flick romance movie my ex-fiance made me watch with her, Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia, is a beautiful love story. It resonates through the spiralling, eye-stinging sierra sand of brutal Mexico.
After, The Wild Bunch, this is Peckinpah's best movie. And quite possibly his most innocent and brutal, at the same time. God help the world if Hollywood ever attempts to make a remake of this great film.
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