Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

Yep, spoilers.

Sam Peckinpah's BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA from 1974 is the sort of visceral, exhausting experience I would imagine from a director often dubbed "bloody Sam". It's a balls-out, entirely shot in Mexico "renegade production" on which Peckinpah had final cut. It also turns out to be a ragged masterpiece, far more than merely the brutal ride through a dusty hell I was expecting, though it certainly is that.

Sitting down to finally watch this movie, I was ready for just a good 'ol dose of filmic machismo: swift and sudden violence, hard drinking and smoking antiheroes, an air of amorality. That would completely summarize most of what passes for the genre these days. Conversely, Peckinpah, in many of his films, goes much further than the cynical and gory surfaces would suggest and delves headlong into his characters' minds and souls, never flinching when the maggots are revealed.

1971's STRAW DOGS is probably the best example. That film is an unsettling essay on manhood, passivity, proaction, and the primal animal nature and the very thin line that divides it from civility. The most uncomfortable moments come when Susan George's character, Amy, is raped by a local goon, her ex-boyfriend. The act is savage, but her reaction is troubling. Audiences want evil to wholly evil. Was Amy enjoying it? BRING ME..has a scene that somewhat echoes the earlier movie, when a woman who is about the be raped seems to resign herself, ready. When her boyfriend finally kills the would-be rapist, her face suggests confliction, maybe even disappointment. Women may get knocked around in Peckinpah's films, but most of the time they are given complexity. So are the themes of love, loyalty, violation of same.

In BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA, the late, great Warren Oates plays Benny, a lowlife American running a bar and playing standards on his piano in a flyspeck Mexican town. By the time we meet him, we know that a million dollar price tag has been placed on (literally) the head of one Alfredo Garcia by a wealthy tycoon/industrialist. Seems that Alfredo, who once worked for the man, impregnated his daughter.

Dispatched are several would-be bounty hunters, including the curious duo of WASPy looking men (Robert Webber and Gig Young, smarmily effective) whose searches are dead-ends. When they turn up at Benny's saloon, the desparate pianist is offered the job for a fraction of the original offer (unbeknownst to Benny). Benny sees a deliverance for himself and his prostitute girlfriend, Elita (Isela Vega), a former lover of Alfredo. When she tells him that Garcia had died a week earlier in a car accident, the gig seems to have just gotten easier.

But there's a grave to dig up, and a corpse to decapitate. The simplest plans always go awry. There are competitors after the same reward. There are moral objections from Elita and a group of Mexicans who hover around the gravesite and nearby church. Along the way, Benny and Elita's complex relationship gets a hard examination, with entire scenes devoted to their discussions of love and honor. If this film was remade, as other Peckinpahs (THE GETAWAY and STRAW DOGS) have been, those rich moments would be excised because audiences would get bored and scream for the next shootout. I really treasure the golden age of 70s cinema and patient editing.

Oh, there are still plenty of bursts of violence, mainly late in the proceedings. There are double crosses and revelations and Peckinpah's patented slow motion bullet spraying. But by the time the hardware comes out, Peckinpah has fleshed out the scenario so it means something. You can accuse the director of many things, but staging mindless violence is not among them.

The storyline incorporates many statements about the blood bonds among families, but also the membership in larger groups, like perhaps in the family of God, with brothers and sisters you didn't know you had. Is there room at the cross for a maverick, desparate would-be bandido who seeks solace? Benny learns gradually that lives (alive or dead) can't be valued in currency, and the pursuit of it may well lead to even greater poverty. You certainly can't buy penance. I especially liked the scene where Benny, after a scuffle, tries to wash his face in a trough near the church, only to find it filled with algae. He laments but then finally turns on a spigot above it for clean water, as if from above. A sort-of baptism.

The most interesting relationship in BRING ME... has to be between Benny and Alfredo's head, which the former acquires after much trouble and a high body count. As the pianist's soul is eroded bit by bit with the more he learns about the deceased and the reasons why someone wants his head, the more of a kinship Benny feels. Oates does some defining work in his dialogues, er, monologues as he pilots various beat-up autos, shirt soaked with blood, with the head in a bag swarmed with flies in the passenger seat. Benny even feels the need to honor Alfredo by giving him a shower.

There's a fair amount of grim humor in this movie, as you might've guessed. There are also 2 highly amusing sight gags with Richard Nixon (at the time of filming facing impeachment) as the target. It was well known that Peckinpah was not exactly a supporter.

Finally, the journey will lead Benny all the way back to the tycoon who set the whole damned thing in motion. By then, it's no longer about the money. This is a fine film.