The cultural iconography of the film lone star cannot be mistaken. It is however the exact type of iconography that Jose Limon speaks of in his essay, a shift of the social relations between Anglos and Mexicans during a specific time frame in the southwest. From a generalist’s perspective, lone star is the story of a man on the search for the answer to a mystery and in the process discovers more of his own personal history. Inside this story however John Sayles seamlessly weaves in little tidbits of others lives into the grand scheme of the story. The most important detail in understanding these tidbits is to understand that almost all of them in some form or another revolve around history, the history of a family, friends, a town, and a relationship. These problems and issues involving history draw heavily on problems that still to this day remain prevalent, especially living in a state such as New Mexico. This all leads up to a rather spectacular conclusion in which classical notations of history are “re-worked” if you would to show a stark new knowledge (or lack thereof) of how In certain situations human nature tends to transcend its own history. These conclusions, the special conclusions are more common in our conditions of today. Lone star especially during a time in which these types of inferences and stigmas were so prevalent, provided an insight into the ways we can exist outside our cultural history by choosing to exist only in the present. Choosing to let blood only mean what we let it, and re-working historical contingencies towards our advantage is what lone star is truly about. The stage was set for this classic re-working expectance in the town of Frontera, a town in which “nineteen out of twenty” people are Mexican with the rest being black or white. The town’s inner power infrastructure seemingly rests in the hands of the white minority, but not for long as the town is on edge as everyone knows that in the next elections for the first time, the Mexican majority will begin to assume placing in the city’s local government just as they have already done in the towns schools, businesses and churches. The town itself is in a bit of an identity crisis as its townsfolk are in arguments over the town’s history and exactly what historical context occurred to bring about the current state of Frontera. A local history teacher Pillar Cruz is leading a struggle against the community. The deep complexity of the historical situation leads her to conform a more general consensus where all angles of the story would be told as part of the town’s history. The problem with that however is that in the present each group clings to a different version of history. Each group seemingly clings onto renditions of the past that better suit their roles in, and understanding of, the social situation and political complexities of the town of Frontera. Pillar the teacher of their children becomes the voice of reason as the tries to show them all that in each specific way their stories were each true just perhaps not to the extent in which they originally had imagined. The search for Sam reveals the same types of inner arguments as the truth in his own personal history begin to unravel. Sam tries to understand the skeleton because it is 100% real in the here and now. The townsfolk are so loving of his father that a bronze monument is to be erected. Sam is concerned with the impact of the history he begins to discover and that is one of the most obvious messages and lessons in this movie, the limits to the certainty and uncertainty of truth.
It takes Sam the rest of the movie to understand his history, Mercedes’ first husband, Mercedes and his father, the truth about who shot Charley Wade. Eladio Cruz, Wade shooting Eladio for refusing to pay protection, Eladio being killed two years before Mercedes gave birth to Pillar!(Starwars style!)
When he was younger Sam was angry with his father and Mercedes for forbidding the two to be around each other. He was told not to be too interested in the past because of things that he might learn. Now he truly understands what his father meant as he revealed the courtship between him and Mercedes. This brings an entire new phenomenon of meaning to Otis Payne’s famous line in the movie. If “blood only means what we let it” there can be some obscure form of incest meaning. Traditional roles and conventional culture would say that regardless of misunderstanding and depth of love, they simply should not continue to see each other knowing the very burden of their intertwined histories and reality of their shared blood. However this is where lone star tends to set itself apart from other conventional roll taking movies, the film ultimately shows that the past is only what we let it mean in the present, any skewered reality of history whether it be amazing or horrific will undoubtedly shape and form what our current reality is. And that reality is the reality in which we live in, a reality in which people have the ability to choose to unburden or burden themselves from historical “weight.”