Eighteen
years is a long prison stretch for killing someone in a fair gun duel,
especially when the other party had been goading the unassuming but lethal Juan
Sáyago for months. Of course, nobody ever said the Old West was fair, on either
side of the border. The revolvers, horses, and saloons don’t lie—this is a
western, but it happens to be a decidedly revisionist western, co-written by
Gabriel García Márquez and Carlos Fuentes. Sáyago has done his time, but his
past won’t stay buried in Arturo Ripstein’s Time
to Die
(trailer here),
which opens this Friday in New York.
Sáyago
has returned home, but his old life is long gone. His mother is dead, his house
is in ruins, and his intended, Mariana Sampedro was married and widowed in the
time he was away. Technically, she is available again, but it is not practical
for Sáyago to think that way about the bereaved mother of a small boy, at least
not while the Trueba Brothers are out for revenge.
Their
father had it coming, so Sáyago eventually gave it to him, but that is not how
the Truebas see it. Eventually, the old timers start to talk some sense into
the younger Pedro Trueba. He has a fiancée of his own he would like to start a
life with, but his older brother Julián is a hard case.
Sounds
like a classic Anthony Mann western, doesn’t it? For some reason, critics try
not to use the “W” word to discuss Time
to Die, using terms like “revenge drama” or “contemplation of machismo.” It
is certainly both those things, as are many other westerns. Reportedly, Fuentes’
role was to Mexicanize García Márquez’s dialogue, but in terms of themes and
characters, Time to Die is not so
very different from classic brooding Hollywood westerns like High Noon and The Searchers. Yet, that is exactly the strength of Ripstein’s
western. It is lean and mean and universal and archetypally elemental.
Jorge
Martínez de Hoyos is terrific as Sáyago. He is either the schlubbiest hardnose
or the steeliest sad sack ever. Mexican Golden Age movie star Marga López is
wonderful tragic, but elegant as the widow who mourns more for the loss of her
life with Sáyago. However, it is Enrique Rocha and Alfredo Leal who really give
the film its electric intensity as the vengeance-warped Brothers Trueba.
