March 26, 2019 (XXXVIII:8) Arturo Ripstein: TIME TO DIE (1966, 90 min.)

DIRECTOR Arturo Ripstein WRITING Gabriel García Márquez and Carlos Fuentes wrote dialogue for their adaptation of Márquez’s story PRODUCERS Alfredo Ripstein and César Santos Galindo MUSIC Carlos Jiménez Mabarak CINEMATOGRAPHY Alex Phillips EDITING Carlos Savage CAST Marga López...Mariana Sampedro Jorge Martínez de Hoyos...Juan Sayago Enrique Rocha...Pedro Trueba Alfredo Leal...Julián Trueba Blanca Sánchez...Sonia Tito Junco...Comisario Quintín Bulnes...Diego Martín Ibáñez Miguel Macía...Druggist Carlos Jordán...Casildo Arturo Martínez...Cantinero Hortensia Santoveña...Rosita Carolina Barret...Mamá de Sonia Manuel Dondé...Barber Claudio Isaac...Claudio Sampedro Leonardo Castro Cecilia Leger...Housekeeper Luz María Velázquez...Nana Adolfo Lara Alfredo Chavira ARTURO RIPSTEIN Y ROSEN (b. December 13, 1943 in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico) is a Mexican director (59 credits), writer (21 credits), and occasional actor (19 credits) who began his film career as an uncredited assistant director to Luis Buñuel on the 1962 film The Exterminating Angel. He has been nominated for the Palm d’Or at Cannes three times for El santo oficio (1974), La reina de la noche (1994), and El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (1999), and he was nominated for the Un Certain Regard Award at Cannes for El evangelio de las maravillas (1998). Since 1986’s El imperio de la fortuna, his wife Paz Alicia Garciadiego has written for all of his narrative films. These are some of the films he has directed: Time to Die (1966), Memories of the Future (1969), The Children's Hour (1969), The Castle of Purity (1973), The Holy Inquisition (1974),

The Far Side of Paradise (1976), The Black Widow (1977), Hell Without Limits (1978), Life Sentence (1979), La tía Alejandra (1979), Seduction (1981), Rastro de muerte (1981), Sweet Challenge (1988 TV Series), Woman of the Port (1991), Triángulo (1992 TV Series), La sonrisa del diablo (1992 TV Series), Principio y fin (1993), La reina de la noche (1994), Deep Crimson (1996), No One Writes to the Colonel (1999), Such Is Life (2000), The Ruination of Men (2000), The Virgin of Lust (2002), The Reasons of the Heart (2011), Bleak Street (2015), and Maestros Olvidados, oficios que sobreviven (2016-2018 TV Series documentary). GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ (b. March 6, 1927 in Aracataca, Magdalena, Colombia—d. April 17, 2014 (age 87) in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico) was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. He is most famous for his novels One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). He won the Nobel Prize in Literature winner in 1982 "for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts." CARLOS FUENTES (b. November 11, 1928 in Panama City, Panama—d. May 15, 2012 (age 83) in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, The New York Times described Fuentes as "one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world" and an important

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influence on the Latin American Boom, the "explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s.” His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won. ALEX PHILLIPS (b. January 11, 1901 in Renfrew, Ontario, Canada—d. June 14, 1977 (age 76) in Mexico, D.F., Mexico) was a Canadian-born Mexican cinematographer (216 credits) whose career spanned the 1920s to the 1970s. He worked on many of Luis Buñuel’s Mexican films. These are some of the films he worked on: See My Lawyer (1921), Hold Your Breath (1924), Seven Days (1925), Up in Mabel's Room (1926), The Carnation Kid (1929), Divorce Made Easy (1929), Shadow of Pancho Villa (1933), Juarez and Maximillian (1934), Heart of a Bandit (1934), Soulless Women (1934), Cruz Diablo (1934), The Treasure of Pancho Villa (1935), The Dressel Family (1935), Luponini de Chicago (1935), Life Begins Today (1935), Marihuana (1936), Judas (1936), Supreme Law (1937), Wandering Bird (1937), La paloma (1937), Nobody's Wife (1937), The Swallow (1938), María (1938), In Rough Style (1938), The Mad Empress (1939), I Shall Live Again (1940), Imperial Cavalry (1942), The Eternal Secret (1942), Toast of Love (1943), St. Francis of Assisi (1944), Miguel Strogoff (1944), Naná (1944), Gran Hotel (1944), María Magdalena, pecadora de Magdala (1946), The Other One (1946), Fantasía ranchera (1947), Bel Ami (1947), The Kneeling Goddess (1947), Reina de reinas: La Virgen María (1948), La sin ventura (1948), May God Forgive Me (1948), Revancha (1948), The Devil Is a Woman (1950), Pancho Villa Returns (1950), In the Palm of Your Hand (1951), Mexican Bus Ride (1952), The Absentee (1952), Women Who Work (1953), The Proud and the Beautiful (1953), Robinson Crusoe (1954), We Two (1955), Chilam Balam (1955), Adam and Eve (1956), Sierra Baron (1958), The Last of the Fast Guns (1958), Ten Days to Tulara (1958), Villa!! (1958), For the Love of Mike (1960), Geronimo (1962), Little Village (1962), The Rape of the Sabines (1962), The Rage (1962), Of Love and Desire (1963), Black Wind (1965), Time to Die (1966), Juan Colorado (1966), The Female Soldier (1966), Estrategia matrimonio (1966), Traitors of San Angel (1967), La guerrillera de Villa (1967), Memories of the Future (1969), Andante (1969), Dead Aim (1971), The Fearmaker (1971), The Night of a Thousand Cats (1972), and The Castle of Purity (1973). MARGA LÓPEZ (b. June 21, 1924 in San Miguel de Tucuman, Argentina—d. July 4, 2005 (age 81) in Mexico City, Mexico) was an Argentine-born Mexican actress (106 credits). Her film debut was in Humberto Gómez Landero 1945 film El hijo desobediente. In 1959, she appeared in Luis Buñuel’s Nazarín.

These are some of her other film and television appearances: Mamá Inés (1946), Las colegialas (1946), Con la música por dentro (1947), Salón México (1949), Midnight (1949), Love for Love (1950), Negro es mi color (1951), Tres hombres en mi vida (1952), Eugenia Grandet (1953), After the Storm (1955), El

diario de mi madre (1958), Beneath the Sky of Mexico (1958), My Wife Understands Me (1959), Mi madre es culpable (1960), Behind the Clouds (1962), Diablos en el cielo (1965), Sinful (1965), Youth Without Law (1966), Time to Die (1966), Mothers' Day (1969), The Book of Stone (1969), The Professor (1971), Rosario (1971), Doña Macabra (1972), La carcel de Laredo (1985), Reclusorio (1997), Mujer, casos de la vida real (1997 TV Series), El privilegio de amar (1998-1999 TV Series), The Beach House (2000 TV Series), Carita de ángel (2000 TV Series), The Spring (2001 TV

Series), Adventures in Time (2001 TV Series), and Bajo la misma piel (2003 TV Series). JORGE MARTÍNEZ DE HOYOS (b. September 25, 1920 in Mexico City, Mexico—d. May 6, 1997 (age 76) in Mexico City, Mexico) was a Mexican actor (103 credits) who debuted in the American film Adventures of Casanova in 1947 and in the Mexican cinema in Esquina baja in 1948. He made his debut on television in the early 1960s and would go on to appear in the famous series Lonesome Dove (1989). These are some of his appearances in film and television: Una familia de tantas (1949), Hay lugar para... dos (1949), Confidencias de un ruletero (1949), Cuatro contra el mundo (1950), Pobre corazón (1950), Pata de palo (1950), Entre tu amor y el cielo (1950), El grito de la carne (1951), Vivillo desde chiquillo (1951), Dicen que soy comunista (1951), Mexican Bus Ride (1952), Montana Territory (1952), Ahora soy rico (1952), La mujer que tu quieres (1952), El misterio del carro express (1953), Los dineros del diablo (1953), Sueños de gloria (1953), Untouched (1954), El túnel 6 (1955), The Treasure of Pancho Villa (1955), La doncella de piedra (1956), Comanche (1956), Donde el círculo termina (1956), The Hidden One (1956), Death in the Garden (1956), Los amantes (1956), Canasta de cuentos mexicanos (1956), Dios no lo quiera (1957), La mafia del crimen (1958), Una golfa (1958), Housewife to Your Neighbor (1958), The Smile of the Virgin (1958), Café Colón (1959), Sábado negro (1959), The Magnificent Seven (1960), Las recién casadas (1962), One Day in December (1962), Cinco asesinos esperan (1964), 100 Cries of Terror (1965), Black Wind (1965), Smoky (1966), Time to Die (1966), The Professionals (1966), Day of the Evil Gun (1968), Guns for San Sebastian (1968), Valentín de la Sierra (1968), The Apple of Discord (1968), The Adventurers (1970), The Bridge in the Jungle (1970), McCloud (1975 TV Series), La India (1976), La casta divina (1977), Los amantes frios (1978), Damian (1985), Cronos (1993), A Trickle of Blood (1995), and Oedipo alcalde (1996).

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ENRIQUE ROCHA (b. January 5, 1940 in Guanajuato, Mexico) is a Mexican film and television actor (82 credits), known for films such as Satanico Pandemonium (1975), El privilegio de amar (1998) and Por un beso (2000). These are some other films and television series he has appeared in: Confesión de Stavroguin (1963 Short), Los sheriffs de la frontera (1965), La mentira (1965 TV Series), El proceso de Cristo (1965), Time to Die (1965), Marcelo y María (1965), Cristina Guzmán (1966 TV Series), A Woman Possessed (1965), El caudillo (1965), The Bed (1965), Los amigos (1965), Santa (1965), Prohibido (1965), El club de los suicidas (1965), El monasterio de los buitres (1965), Satanás de todos los horrores (1965), Satanico Pandemonium (1965), Hora Marcada (1988 TV Series), The Other Crime (1965), Pasión y poder (1988 TV Series), Violencia a sangre fría (1989 TV Movie), Kino (1965), Two Women, One Road (1993 TV Series), Mujeres infieles (1965), Las Vías del Amor (2002 TV Series), Rubí (2004 TV Series), Rebelde (2004-2006 TV Series), Lola: Érase una vez (2007 TV Series), Wild Heart (2009-2010 TV Series), and Silvia Pinal... frente a tí (2019 TV Mini-Series). ALFREDO LEAL (b. May 18, 1930 in Mexico, Distrito Federal, Mexico—d. October 2, 2003 (age 73) in Ciudad de México, Mexico) was an actor (30 credits), known for Las travesuras del diablo (1991), which he wrote and directed, and films such as Río Hondo (1965), Time to Die (1966), La muerte es puntual (1967), Carne de horca (1973), Hermanos de sangre (1974), Acapulco 12-22 (1975), La vida difícil de una mujer fácil (1979), Cuando tejen las arañas (1979), Lobo salvaje (1983), Maten al fugitivo (1986), Conexión criminal (1987), Traficantes de cocaina (1987), La chamarra de la muerte (1989), Los fugitivos (1990), and Cuentas claras (1999). BLANCA SÁNCHEZ (b. March 2, 1946 in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico—d. 7, 2010 (age 63) in Mexico City, Mexico) was a Mexican character actress (109 credits) who appeared in films such as Tiempo de morir (1966), Cuando los hijos se van (1969), Los amores de Chucho el Roto (1970), and Mamá Dolores (1973). She appeared in several telenovelas such as Quinceañera and Luz y sombra. These are some of her other film and television appearances: Yo, el mujeriego (1963), La sombra de los hijos (1964), Canta mi corazón (1965), Joselito vagabundo (1966), El cachorro (1966), To Kill Is Easy (1966), Los mediocres (1966), Los jinetes de la bruja (En el viejo Guanajuato) (1966), Vértigo (1966 TV Series), Los tres mosqueteros de Dios (1967), Canción de Navidad (1974 TV Movie), Los bandidos del río frío (1976 TV Series), Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom (1980), The Oil Conspiracy (1981), Las delicias del matrimonio (1994), First Love (2000 TV Series), Green Stones (2001), Fuego en la sangre (2008 TV Series), Enemigos íntimos (2008), La rosa de Guadalupe (2008

TV Series), Mujeres asesinas (2009 TV Series), Los simuladores (2009 TV Series), and It's Not You, It's Me (2010). Rebecca Flint Marx: “Arturo Ripstein” (Rovi): Widely considered Mexico's most celebrated and respected contemporary filmmaker, as well as perhaps the only director to have truly inherited Luis Buñuel's mantle, Arturo Ripstein is a legend in his own right. His films have earned both fame and infamy for taking melodrama to its macabre extremes, and they

reflect the director's fascination -- one shared by Buñuel -- with l'amour fou and claustrophobia. Although his films have been enthusiastically received outside of Mexico in France and Spain, Ripstein is largely unknown to American audiences, an oversight that is unfortunate at the very least. Born in Mexico City on December 13, 1945, Ripstein was the son of producer Alfredo Ripstein, Jr. Growing up on the sets of his father's films, he became infatuated with the idea of becoming a filmmaker at a very young age. He began his professional career at the age of 19 as the (unbilled) assistant director to Buñuel on El Ángel Exterminador (1962). This working relationship gave rise to a close personal friendship that continued until Buñuel's death, and although Ripstein has claimed that he learned very little from working with the master director (because, he once stated in an interview, Buñuel was "perfect"), the latter's influences on his films are unmistakable. Ripstein made his directorial and screenwriting debut in 1965 with Tiempo De Morir (Time to Die). A story of murder and revenge, it explored many of the themes that the director would make the trademarks of his brand of "macabre melodrama" in the years to come. The film's script was written by Carlos Fuentes and Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez; Ripstein would subsequently collaborate with a number of important Latin American writers, including Joss Emilio Pancheco (El Castillo De La Pureza (The Castle of Purity), 1974, and El Santo Oficio (Holy Office), 1974); José Donoso (El Lugar Sin Limites (Hell Has No Limits), 1977); Vincente Leñero (La Tía Alejandra (Aunt Alexandra), 1978); and Luis Spota (Cadena Perpetua (In For Life), 1978). During the '70s, Ripstein garnered increasing recognition for his films, particularly El Santo Oficio, which was shown in competition at the 1974 Cannes Festival. An account of the sufferings of a Jewish family forced to flee to Mexico during the Spanish Inquisition, it drew on Ripstein's own Jewish heritage and provided a stark exploration of the claustrophobia of oppressive secrets and assumed identity. Due to a lack of funding for his films, Ripstein occasionally made commissioned movies, such as La Ilegal (The Illegal Woman, 1979). Produced by Televicine, the filial company of the Mexican media conglomerate Televisa, it starred one of Mexico's biggest starlets at the time, Lucia Méndez as an illegal Mexican immigrant in the United States. Such commissioned films were thankfully the exception

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to the norm rather than the norm itself, and Ripstein continued to do his best work on an independent level. After directing Imperio De La Fortuna (The Realm of Fortune, 1987), which was based on a text by Juan Rolfo, he began working with his wife Paz Alicia Garciadiego, a collaboration that produced some of Ripstein's most celebrated films. Of his work with screenwriter Garciadiego, the director once quipped that she, as a Catholic, introduces sin to their scripts, whereas he, as a Jew, provides the guilt. One of Ripstein's more acclaimed efforts with Garciadiego was Principio y Fin (The Beginning and the End, 1994). Based upon the novel by Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, the film traced the disintegration of a family following the sudden death of the father. It won the San Sebastian Film Festival's Gold Shell award; that same year, Ripstein's La Reina De La Noche (The Queen of the Night, 1994) was shown in competition at Cannes. A fictionalized biography of legendary Mexican singer Lucha Reyes, it was melodrama at its most effective, combining beauty and tragedy with the authority of real-life occurrences. Profundo Carmesí (Deep Crimson, 1996), was Ripstein's most celebrated work to date. Based upon the real-life "Lonely Hearts Murders" that took place in Mexico during the late 1940s, it was perhaps Ripstein's most full-bodied and successful exploration of l'amour fou. Of this brand of crazy love that takes place between the film's main characters, a badly aging gigolo and an excessively overweight nurse with halitosis, Ripstein stated "There's nothing like mad love: it shatters, corrupts, transforms...Nothing like mad love to break, tear down, and undo the house of social order. Nothing is more flippant, sacrilegious, or heretic. Nothing more human." The film won a number of awards at the Venice Film Festival and earned a Special Mention in Latin American Cinema at that year's Sundance Festival. In 1997, Ripstein was awarded the National Prize for the Arts in Mexico, becoming the only filmmaker aside from Buñuel to have received the honor. That same year, he began working on a new film, El Evangelio De Las Maravillas (Divine), 1998). Based on actual events that took place in Mexico during the 1970s, it was a comedy-drama about a religious cult. The film was screened at Cannes. The following year, Ripstein's El Coronel No Tiene Quien Le Escriba (No One Writes to the Colonel was also screened in competition at the festival. Based on García Márquez's novel, it was another study of a character trapped in a fatal destiny, driven into a hopeless void by his needy supplication to mere illusion. Clayton Dillard: “Time to Die” (Slant) Arturo Ripstein’s Time to Diecommences with an explicit reference to John Ford’s The Searchers. As Juan Sagayo (Jorge Martínez de Hoyos) exits a prison after serving an 18-year

sentence for murder, the camera shoots him from behind as he moves forward onto the open land. The shot echoes the final scene of Ford’s film, where John Wayne’s racist, defeated war veteran slumbers away from his family’s ranch and toward the horizon. However, Ripstein’s allusion comes to distinguish his vision of the western genre from Ford’s, as Juan’s subsequent arrival in a small Mexican town brings forth the vengefully-

minded sons of the man he killed; they see Juan’s death as the only possible, justifiable resolution to a childhood spent mourning, and stewing in, their father’s absence. The film understands that conflict often stems from deluded perceptions of the past; Juan’s violent entanglements by the film’s conclusion seem predetermined in ways that his attempts at reason cannot overcome. The screenplay by Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel García Márquez turns Juan’s aims to exonerate his previous act of violence, which was seemingly in

self-defense, into a series of fruitless gestures, as Julian (Alfredo Leal), the eldest son of Juan’s victim, refuses to even consider the possibility that the image he’s built in his mind of Juan as a cold, ruthless killer is perhaps entirely false. Ripstein stages Juan’s initial encounters with peripheral members of the town in steady, symmetrical shots, suggesting a false sense of security that Julian’s presence will soon disrupt. Luis Buñuel took a similar approach to scene construction in 1953’s El Bruto, playing a climactic murder with the same tone as any other dialogue exchange in the film. The effect becomes disorienting in Time to Die, as Juan’s refusal to engage Julian’s challenge to a duel provides no solace from the eldest son’s persistent thirst for bloodshed. The script juggles a wide range of character motivations, including that of Julian’s younger brother, Pedro (Enrique Rocha), who comes to know Juan before realizing that he’s the man who killed his father. Pedro’s voice of reason counters Julian’s irrational fury; he recognizes Juan’s sincerity, believing his claims that he acted out of self-preservation rather than malice. Still, it’s Julian’s temper that supersedes Pedro’s preference for conversation, which aligns with the subsequent themes of Ripstein’s work, namely 1978’s Hell Without Limits, where violence proves to be the only refuge of angry, homophobic men. Ripstein sees in Pedro’s more levelheaded sensibilities a possible out from such a legacy of vengeance, yet it seems that the lacking structures of justice and psychotherapy cannot be successfully countered by the peaceful will of a community held under the thumb of Julian’s wrath. Thus, Time to Die is a revisionist western that anticipates the genre’s turn toward a reckoning with the ghastly, resounding effects of historical violence. One can easily see in Juan’s dilemma a comparable form of futile argumentation faced by Gary Cooper’s town marshal in 1952’s High Noon, yet Ripstein offers no form of protection for Juan, who finds himself with his hand grasping a pistol on his hip by the film’s end, faced

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with killing off the second generation of a family against his will. In the closing shots, especially, theatrical compositions and distorted image perspective demonstrate Ripstein’s interest in shifting tonal registers to reflect the horror in recognizing how reason and empathy as strategies of communication are often insufficient weapons to counter the will to power of violent men.

Chadwick Jenkins: “The Western and Melancholy: On Arturo Ripstein’s ‘Time to Die” (PopMatters): If the vital force of existence requires that we connect to the world around us, then melancholia is the principle of death. A man walks through the gates of a prison somewhere in the nearly barren wasteland of a remote area in Mexico. The doors shut behind him but we see no one else, simply the man, already sweating, carrying only a small bag presumably containing his belongings. He enters the world again after 18 years of incarceration and wends his way toward his hometown where he is no longer wanted but all-too-well remembered. The guitar on the soundtrack accompanies a lugubrious horn, producing an effect of inevitability, the ineluctability of one’s progress through life, our inexorable tendency toward our own ends. This is the opening of Time to Die (Tiempo de Morir; 1966), Arturo Ripstein’s directorial debut based on a script written by the celebrated Latin American novelists Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel García Márquez. The film is rarely screened in the United States (this is its first real US run, having only appeared sporadically prior to this) and will be shown in New York City at the Film Forum from 15-21 September. It's one of the finest examples of the so-called “Chili” or “Charro” Western (Mexican-made Westerns starting in the '30s that usually focus on the lives of horsemen in rural towns) from the period that marks the waning of that genre’s influence. It also inaugurates the prolific directorial career of Ripstein, an artist too often overlooked by US cinephiles. The man continues through the barren landscape, the aggregation of sweat that appears on the back of his shirt deepens and spreads. Slowly signs of habitation begin to appear but the land seems abandoned still—a barbed-wire fence within the

wasteland that pointlessly protects the empty vastness, a stone wall that encloses nothing. The man approaches a solitary grave marked by a wooden cross and we finally see his face as he lights a cigarette. From the beginning, we recognize in Juan Sáyago (Jorge Martínez de Hoyos) the specter of living death, a man so haunted by his life that even in all his remaining vitality is a moribund reminder of his own inescapable fate, a fate he may not have deserved but that he must bear. The town to which he returns is a dusty no-man's land. The wind-blown farm his mother left behind is desiccated; the door to the yard falls off of its hinges from only the slightest exertion of force. This is unforgiving land in an unforgiving town. Sáyago was imprisoned for killing another horseman, Trueba. Trueba was bitter over the loss of a race and continually insulted Sáyago publicly, humiliated him, and terrorized him. But then Sáyago killed Trueba and went to jail. Trueba’s two sons (played by Enrique Rocha and Alfredo Leal) remain in the town—one with no memory of the event (he was simply too young) and the other oppressed by the bitter and distorted recollections of a child who lost his father at an age when it is nearly impossible not to worship your father. The remaining citizens of the town, many of whom openly admire Sáyago, would prefer to see him leave the village in peace, to live out his days far away from his home that can seemingly neither forget nor forgive him. But Sáyago refuses any suggestions of his departure. He was promised a horse and a job by his former employer (now deceased) upon his release. The employer’s son offers Sáyago any horse of his choosing, provided Sáyago leave town. Sáyago simply foregoes the horse. Meanwhile, the older son of Trueba revisits the same torture upon Sáyago that the man had experienced from the father. In this film, everything returns upon the wheel of fate. Sáyago lives within a closed circle of time; the film documents the recapitulation of Sáyago’s initial fall from grace—but now he is older, he lacks the urgency and cocksureness of youth. In his senescence, in his living experience of a walking death, Sáyago becomes the figure of the melancholic. The melancholic occupies a peculiar position in the world. On the one hand, the melancholic is deeply concerned with her earthbound, creaturely nature. Closed in on the self, the melancholic seeks shelter within the space of a world from which she feels alienated. The melancholic is acutely aware of her abiding awareness of a latent illness, a discomfiting sense of the proximity of others that can never be close enough, comforting enough, reassuring enough. On the other hand, the melancholic separates from other subjects (and objects) in the world to gain a transcendent view of reality. She looks beyond the world of experience and sees the world for what it is: a collection of dead objects, bereft of deeper meaning that nevertheless present themselves as cryptic symbols to be read and interpreted, symbols that require our discernment but belie our understanding. Thus, the melancholic attempts to hold this seeming contradiction together in an impossible unity of thought: the world is our home and only possible comfort and yet it continually recedes from our presence; it vibrates with the echoing lament of our unhoused condition. Our being is engulfed by an absence that sits at the very core of our existence. The melancholic’s characteristic affect of sadness is therefore not a

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merely subjective response to regrettable conditions but rather a disposition that reveals the world to exist under the sign of an irresistible lachrymosity. This is a sadness that appears as an objective view of the state of things. It’s the enactment of a recognition of our deep desire to connect with things in the world and our utter inability to do so. If the vital force of existence requires that we connect to the world around us, then melancholia is the principle of death. The Western as a genre (and the “Chili” Western, in particular) accommodates the melancholic in a particularly fitting manner; this is the existential core of the lonely figure that resides at the center of so many Westerns: the man with no name, the stranger with a secret untold or, as in this film, the doomed man who longs for home but recognizes the intransigent nature of fate, the man who recognizes that he will never (not even in death) stop paying for his past transgressions (even transgressions made against his will), for no compensation will satisfy. The notion of “compensation” or “retribution” requires a faith in the underlying balance of the world; all accounts can be settled in the end with some sense of divine propriety. This is the promise held out by a faith in love and love’s connectivity. The world is meaningful because I connect to it; my belonging to the world makes it the site of repletion, of inherent value. The melancholic sees that this is not so, that the accounts are eternally blasted. My longing for the world is predicated upon the impassable abyss that separates it from me. No balance can be achieved because my relation to the world is founded upon a radical asymmetry between the melancholic desire for meaning and the recalcitrant refusal of the world to provide anything beyond empty symbols that promise meaning but turn to dust upon the merest inspection. Love does not dissipate for the melancholic, values do not crumble. But the melancholic recognizes that love and value are not inherent in the world. They are the result of an unfulfillable desire. There is love and there are values not because the world tends toward balance but rather because it is hopelessly askew. Love and values are the existential gambits of the melancholic attempt to reconcile oneself with the irreconcilable indifference of the world. So, Sáyago cannot reinsert himself in his hometown but neither can he depart from it. He must haunt its spaces in that melancholic paradox of alienated belonging. Sáyago’s desire to return home, to forge meaning within his life by connecting to his past (seeking out his former home, his former friends, his former love) must fail. Fate, in this sense, is not what’s deserved, it’s what must be endured, what must be accepted. The detached insight Sáyago seems to have attained is held in one thought with his longing for reconciliation, his need to return to the repletion of belonging. But this thought, this mode of being, is impossible to maintain; what was once meaningful is now robbed of its significance. The feelings are still there, the symbols of the fullness of his past life remain, but they are emptied out of the connection between Sáyago and his world. Where connection is severed and meaning dissipates, life is lost and death pervades. The title of the film, Time to Die then, becomes not so much about the moment of death (“this is the time you die”) but rather the persistence of a living death of melancholia (“this is the time of abiding death, a living entombment”). Sáyago thus returns to that cross at the end of the film, doubtless the cross that commemorates the grave of the man he killed (although this is never explicitly stated in the film)

not simply because it signifies the end of the life he once enjoyed but rather, and more importantly, because it signifies the end of significance, the end of meaning, the beginning of a melancholic realization that death pervades his existence and that fate’s circle inevitably draws to a close.

“Western (genre) (Wikipedia Western is a genre of various arts which tell stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, often centering on the life of a nomadic cowboy or gunfighter armed with a revolver and a rifle who rides a horse. Cowboys and gunslingers typically wear Stetson hats, neckerchief bandannas, vests, spurs, cowboy boots and buckskins (alternatively dusters). Recurring characters include the aforementioned cowboys, Native Americans, bandits, lawmen, bounty hunters, outlaws, gamblers, soldiers (especially mounted cavalry, such as buffalo soldiers), and settlers (farmers, ranchers, and townsfolk). The ambience is usually punctuated with a Western music score, including American and Mexican folk musicsuch as country, Native American music, New Mexico music, and rancheras. Westerns often stress the harshness of the wilderness and frequently set the action in an arid, desolate landscape of deserts and mountains. Often, the vast landscape plays an important role, presenting a "...mythic vision of the plains and deserts of the American West". Specific settings include ranches, small frontier towns, saloons, railways and isolated military forts of the Wild West. Common plots include:

• The construction of a railroad or a telegraph line on the wild frontier.

• Ranchers protecting their family ranch from rustlers or large landowners or who build a ranch empire.

• Revenge stories, which hinge on the chase and pursuit by someone who has been wronged.

• Stories about cavalry fighting Native Americans. • Outlaw gang plots. • Stories about a lawman or bounty hunter tracking down

his quarry. Many Westerns use a stock plot of depicting a crime, then showing the pursuit of the wrongdoer, ending in revenge and retribution, which is often dispensed through a shootout or quick-draw duel. The Western was the most popular Hollywood genre from the early 20th century to the 1960s. Western films first became well-attended in the 1930s. John Ford's landmark Western adventure Stagecoach became one of the biggest hits in

Ripstein: TIME TO DIE—7

1939 and it made John Wayne a mainstream screen star. The popularity of Westerns continued in the 1940s, with the release of classics such as Red River (1948). Westerns were very popular throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Many of the most acclaimed Westerns were released during this time, including High Noon (1952), Shane (1953), The Searchers (1956), Cat Ballou (1965), The Wild Bunch (1969) and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Classic Westerns such as these have been the inspiration for various films about Western-type characters in contemporary settings, such as Junior Bonner (1972), set in the 1970s, and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005), set in the 21st century. Themes The Lone Ranger; a famous heroic lawman who was with a cavalry of six Texas Rangers, until they were all killed but him. He preferred to remain anonymous, so he resigned and built a sixth grave that supposedly held his body. He fights on as a lawman, wearing a mask, for, "Outlaws live in a world of fear. Fear of the mysterious." The Western genre sometimes portrays the conquest of the wilderness and the subordination of nature in the name of civilization or the confiscation of the territorial rights of the original, Native American, inhabitants of the frontier.[1] The Western depicts a society organized around codes of honor and personal, direct or private justice–"frontier justice"–dispensed by gunfights. These honor codes are often played out through depictions of feuds or individuals seeking personal revenge or retribution against someone who has wronged them (e.g., True Grit has revenge and retribution as its main themes). This Western depiction of personal justice contrasts sharply with justice systems organized around rationalistic, abstract law that exist in cities, in which social order is maintained predominately through relatively impersonal institutions such as courtrooms. The popular perception of the Western is a story that centers on

the life of a semi-nomadic wanderer, usually a cowboy or a gunfighter.[1] A showdown or duel at high noon featuring two or

more gunfighters is a stereotypical scene in the popular conception of Westerns. In some ways, such protagonists may be considered the literary descendants of the knight errant which stood at the center of earlier extensive genres such as the Arthurian Romances.[1] Like the cowboy or gunfighter of the Western, the knight errant of the earlier European tales and poetry was wandering from place to place on his horse, fighting villains of various

kinds and bound to no fixed social structures but only to their own innate code of honor. And like knights errant, the heroes of Westerns frequently rescue damsels in distress. Similarly, the wandering protagonists of Westerns share many characteristics with the ronin in modern Japanese culture. The Western typically takes these elements and uses them to tell simple morality tales, although some notable examples (e.g. the later Westerns of John Ford or Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, about an old hired killer) are more morally ambiguous. Westerns often stress the harshness and isolation of the wilderness and frequently set the action in an arid, desolate landscape. Western films generally have specific settings such as isolated ranches, Native American villages, or small frontier towns with a saloon. Oftentimes, these settings appear deserted and without much structure. Apart from the wilderness, it is usually the saloon that emphasizes that this is the Wild West: it is the place to go for music (raucous piano playing), women (often prostitutes), gambling (draw poker or five card stud), drinking (beer or whiskey), brawling and shooting. In some Westerns, where civilization has arrived, the town has a church, a general store, a bank and a school; in others, where frontier rules still hold sway, it is, as Sergio Leone said, "where life has no value".

COMING UP IN THE SPRING 2019 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS (SERIES 38)

Apr 2 Michelangelo Antonioni Blow-Up 1966 Apr 9 Michael Cimino The Deer Hunter 1978

Apr 16 Terry Jones Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life 1983 Apr 23 Stanley Kubrick Eyes Wide Shut 1999

Apr 30 Frederick Wiseman Monrovia, Indiana 2018 May 7 Alfonso Cuarón Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 2004

CONTACTS:...email Diane Christian: engdc@buffalo.edu…email Bruce Jackson bjackson@buffalo.edu...for the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto list@buffalofilmseminars.com....for cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/

The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the State University of New York at Buffalo and the Dipson Amherst Theatre, with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News.