Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

It's a wacky title. The first time I saw it, I was browsing through Hollywood Video with my friend Tim. We were intrigued that an American film would be so forthright about its violent content. Our interest was piqued by the involvement of Sam Peckinpah. For some bizarre reaosn, we didn't rent the film that night. We probably went for something similarly profound, like Office Space or that one about the volcano. No, the other one.

But I have gotten around to this movie by now. You know, after the volcano pictures. And I discovered that it's a harrowing, steely road movie about a man, a woman and the severed head that comes between them. Can you believe the studio worried about the marketing?



Warren Oates wonderfully portrays Benny, a small time crook and part-time piano player living in Mexico. After a wealthy man puts a bounty on the head of chronic philanderer Alfredo Garcia, who has knocked up his fair daughter, Benny finds himself on a quest, along with his prostitute girlfriend Elita (Isela Vega), to find the man's grave.

Garcia's already dead, you see, having perished in a car accident. So, Benny figures he should be able to go to the grave, dig the guy up, cut off his head and claim the reward. Easy, right? Well, not so much.

It would spoil the fun to let you know exactly how Benny's trek turns out, but suffice it to say, it involves a good deal of whisky-slugging, violent gunfights in the Mexican desert and more than one heart-to-heart conversation between a half-crazed maniac and a severed head wrapped up in a satchel.

Many have called the film nihilistic, and there's certainly an element of hopelessness to the enterprise. Benny encounters random cruelty at every turn, from drifters who attempt to rape his girlfriend (one of whom is played by the ever-bearded Kris Kristofferson) to the vaguely sinister fellows who hire him to find Garcia to his eventual face-off with the wealthy aristocrat who started this nonsense in the first place by issuing the film's title request.

But I think this interpretation focuses too much on the film's darkly comic side. Peckinpah often uses the head, and Benny's relationship with it, as fodder for laughs. Though he doesn't appear on screen at all during the film, we get to know Alfredo in an odd way, and this situation - a man whose only friend is a rotting skull attracting flies and suspicion wherever he goes - more often than not reflects a kind of manic wit than a point of view about life.

In fact, the film offers a somewhat hopeful vision of class warfare. At first, Benny eagerly accepts the job for a good deal of money, explaining to his girlfriend that it will provide them a "way out." A way out of Mexico, perhaps, or a way for her to get out of the prostitute business, but most likely a way out of the quiet desperation of their daily lives. But over time, he comes to resent his gruesome assignment. This aristocrat whom he's never met finds Alfredo's life so cheap, he offers reward money to have his remains hand-delivered. Just so he can know for a fact the man died. This resentment drives much of the violence of the film's final act.

And someone who sees themselves as a class warrior can't be much of a nihilist. They believes in nothing, Lebowski, nothing!

Right away, it's clear when watching Alfredo Garcia that it's the work of a special, visionary director. This is not some anonymous action film, but a deeply personal work in which Peckinpah deals with some of the defining issues of his career. Oates famously based Benny's mannerisms on Peckinpah (IMDB informs me that he even borrowed the director's sunglasses), and obviously there's that whole alcoholism thing. But what really drove it home for me was the final shot - the barrel of a gun points out at the camera, while we see the words "Directed by Sam Peckinpah" on the screen.

That's sort of the man's worldview. Shit is just coming at you, and what makes you a man is how you decide to deal with it. Not the most complicated idea in the world, but then, when you make a movie as brisk, entertaining and daring as Alfredo Garcia, even the simplest idea can seem mesmerizing.