Grey Areas of History & Justice | Lone Star (1996) by John Sayles Discussed | US-Mexico Border Towns

Grey Areas of History & Justice
Lone Star (1996) by John Sayles Discussed
US-Mexico Border Towns

I first saw Lone Star by John Sayles on cable one night in the late 90s. I’ve never been a huge fan of thrillers & westerns...and while Lone Star ‘looks’ like both genres on the surface & shares many elements of those genres…it’s more about grey areas of history & justice…the way all these people in Texas are both in conflict with & learning to adapt to one another at all levels but particularly when it comes to ‘race identity’ & relations with regards to local history....

Tonight I’ll be screening & discussing the film.

The plot from Wikipedia:
Two off-duty sergeants stationed at a nearby U.S. Army post discover a human skeleton on an old Army rifle shooting range along with a Masonic ring, a Rio County sheriff's badge, and, later, an expended .45 pistol bullet. Sam Deeds,sheriffof Frontera,Texas, begins an investigation.Texas RangerBen Wetzel agrees with Sam thatforensicsbacks up the identity of the skeleton as Charlie Wade, the infamously corrupt and cruel sheriff who preceded Sam's father, Buddy. Wade mysteriously disappeared in 1957, along withUS$10,000(equivalent to $108,500 in 2023) in county funds. Buddy's high reputation and election as Sheriff resulted from his being widely believed to have confronted the despised Charlie Wade on his corruption and driven him from town.

Frontera, on the banks of the Rio Grande, is aborder townwithracialstrife among theTejano,African American,Native American, and white populations, where the white population is no longer the majority. Sam holds that office because he is the son of the recently deceased Buddy. As a teenager, Sam hated and rebelled against his tyrannical father, leaving town as soon as he was old enough. Since his return to the town two years prior, Sam has chafed under constant comparison to the inflated reputation of the beloved Buddy.

The town is enlarging and renaming the local courthouse in Buddy's honor and proposing the building of an unneeded new prison. Sam is skeptical about the use of his father's name by local business leaders, such as Mercedes Cruz and Buddy's former chief deputy, Mayor Hollis Pogue, to promote projects for personal profit using taxpayers' money. As a teenager, Sam had been in love with Mercedes's Tejano daughter, Pilar, but the intimate relationship was strongly opposed by both Buddy and Mercedes, who took steps to separate them.

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The border issues have been a huge topic that I don’t mean to avoid, especially having the last name Cruz…a name shared by a primary character in Lone Star…which revolves heavily around Mercedes Cruz (a successful ‘integrated’ local business owner) & her daughter Pilar, a single school teacher with two children of her own. That is just one story in a series of interconnected ones all delving deep into the significant cultural differences rising to the surface in Texas during the 90s…tensions that haven’t really gone away to this day.

I feel like Lone Star is the perfect way to discuss the topic surrounding the Mexico/Texas border…and border issues in general…everywhere. There are nuances in how history has been told & often repackaged & how justice has…or hasn’t been…meted out…often times for malevolent & selfish purposes & sometimes for completely different reasons. Lone Star is great in that avoids none of these circumstances…the viewer is confronted with everything that makes them uncomfortable about their own selfish sense of history or foolish stubbornness to insist upon a truth that fits their ego or their narrow worldview…

No one is innocent in Lone Star…but then…maybe many of these people weren’t all that bad or ‘guilty’ either…and that is where Lone Star excels in challenging the viewer. No one is spared…no race is favored or made to look solely as a victim. You see the pomposity that ‘control’ over a system takes over ‘anyone’ who seizes that system of control…regardless of race or gender & you can also see the humanity in some people just wanting to ‘leave it alone & move on’…we aren’t all wired the same.

Lone Star is about unearthing secrets & whether or not it’s okay to leave some buried.

Who gets to write the history books?

It's a question debated within the film & I'd like to explore that further with this audience.

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