Arturo Ripstein was just 21 when he directed Time to Die, a tight, well-crafted "chili Western" with outdoor locations shot in Michoacan and interiors at the Churubusca studio in Mexico City. The 1966 movie is slow-paced but flawless, an impressive debut for the young film-maker. Ripstein was precocious but he had a headstart -- his father, Alfredo Ripstein,, a well-established producer during the so-called "Golden Age of Mexican Cinema", was at the helm of the project and Arturo had apprenticed with Bunuel when he was 18 on the set of The Exterminating Angel (he is said to have carried the Spanish surrealist's briefcase); around the same time, he also watched Louis Malle directing Viva Maria. Although very economically made,,Time to Die was based on top-notch sources: Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote the scenario and Carlos Fuentes adapted Marquez' dialogue, which Ripstein recalls as being written in "Colombian", to idiomatic Mexican Spanish. The film is neatly plotted and features ultra-tough, laconic dialogue -- everyone speaks in tense, declarative aphorisms (seemingly the application of Mexico's pervasive machismo to hardboiled film noir dialogue.) Marquez would become world famous for One-Hundred Years of Solitude the year after Time to Die was released. "I knew Marquez before he was Marquez," Ripstein has said. Much of the thematic material from this film appears later in Marquez' short book Chronicle of a Death Foretold.
Time to Die's plot is classically simple. A man convicted of killing a powerful rancher, Raul Trueba, is released from prison after serving 18 years. Although the ex-convict, Juan Sayago seems to be about 40 everyone calls him an old man. Sayaga returns to his hometown, a spookily deserted village with empty streets and featureless houses built after the Hispanic pattern -- long bare walls enclosing courtyards. Sayago is warned that the sons of Trueba, Julien and Pedro have vowed to kill him and, indeed, within 24 hours of his arrival in town. Both boys have been told that Sayago ambushed their father and shot him in back. Sayago looks up his old girlfriend, now a widow in black with a little boy. She tells him to get out of town if he wants to live. Instead, Sayago goes to his old house (the widow has kept the key for him) and, when he can't get the door open, he kicks it down in a startling scene that reveals that, behind the featureless wall the home turns to the village lane, there is just a ruin where, in fact, a cow is contentedly grazing in the rubble. Savago has met the younger son of his old nemesis, Pedro, and, in fact, loaned him a "headstall", some sort of equestrian gear, not knowing that the man is his sworn enemy. (This being a Mexican film, all sorts of equine lore is referenced and a man's ability to tame and control horses is one measure of his prowess.) Julien, who seems half-crazed, dons the natty vest that his father was wearing when killed by Sayago -- the bullet hole is in the breast, a fact that leads Pedro to question the official version of the killing. Things are starting to look more like the killing happened an "honorable" duel and not a bushwhacking. And, we learn that Raul Trueba, bested in a horse-race by the young Sayago, taunted him into a duel -- as one of the women says: "Sayago was better with horses, better with women, and better with guns." History repeats. Although Sayago wants to be left in peace, Julien rides around town throwing dead animals at him, shooting out a mirror when he is getting his hair cut, and, then, defiling him with blood in a pig's bladder flung into his face. Sayago is a broken man, distraught through most of the movie, and he doesn't want to perpetuate the feud -- indeed, in a couple of scenes we could mistake him for a coward. Pedro, recognizing Sayago's inherent kindness and nobililty, becomes friends with him. Pedro, who was raised without a father (he was born only after Raul's death), becomes unduly affectionate with Sayago -- when the two of them ride a horse that Sayago has just tamed, snuggling together on the saddle, it's obvious that Pedro regards the older man as a mentor and father figure. True to the codes of machismo, the most intimate scenes in the movie involve relationships between men and the scene with the two characters on the horse is startlingly tender. Enraged at Pedro's defection, Julien rides his horse into the local cantina where Sayago is drinking and shoots up the place. Julien then harries the disloyal Pedro down a street mercilessly flogging him with his whip, the most violent and disturbing scene in the movie. Sayago decides he has to intervene and the scene is set for a shoot-out in a strange wind-sculpted badlands, a sort of natural amphitheater surrounded by grotto-like alcoves. The gun battle takes place in a sand storm. As we expect, Sayago has no difficulty outdrawing the callow Julien and kills him. But, then, Pedro arrives and is obligated by the code of masculine honor to kill his father-figure Sayago., Sayago refuses to turn on Pedro and, in fact, throws aside his weapon. Nonetheless, Pedro slaughters Sayago, shooting him repeatedly in the back while the old man staggers away. Sayago falls dead under a big cross that greets travelers arriving the village -- as Ripstein says the cross "means nothing and is not a symbol"; rather, it's a visual flourish that links the film's grim ending to its beginning.
In structure and tone, the black and white film is reminiscent of Fred Zinneman's austere and geometric High Noon. There are ticking clocks and Sayago goes around town encountering various people who either tell him to "get out of Dodge" or encourage him to kill the Trueba boys. (One of his old friends is paralyzed -- he lies in his bed where he is cared-for by his sister, periodically pulling out his six-shooter to blaze away through the window of his room. This man is upset that Sayago is slow to retrieve his six-gun from the widow and face-off with the Trueba boys -- when Sayago is finally pushed past all endurance and commits to the duel with Julien, the old ruffian is overjoyed.) The women in the picture are mostly complicit with the code of machismo -- the widow, in fact, prefers a dead and courageous hero to a live and cowardly lover. She has been tenderly preserving Sayago's six-shooter and, when she retrieves it from her trousseau, she loving caresses the phallic muzzle of the gun. The eerie village, literally a "ghost town" in Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo is also an influence on the film. The empty streets of the hamlet and its violence-haunted history is closely aligned with the doomed village in Rulfo's novel and we know that Fuentes collaborated with Rulfo himself on Roberto Gavaldon's excellent 1964 film Gallo de Oro ("The Golden Cock"); Marquez claimed that he had memorized Pedro Paramo and could recite the book by heart. Ripstein shoots the film in long hand-held camera sequences tracking characters through indoor and exterior landscapes -- if possible, he executes scenes in one continuous tracking shot. This provides the film with a claustrophobic sense of fore-ordained doom -- the characters are trapped by the camera observing them. In the end, Pedro kills the man he has come to admire as his own father with bullets to the back -- replicating his fantasy of how Sayago supposedly killed his own father. The scene in which Sayago meets his old lover at her home is exemplary of Ripstein's reticent and classic style. We see Sayago knock at the door, then, there is a medium close-up (Ripstein doesn't really like close-ups in general) of the woman reacting when she sees her old lover standing at the threshold of the house. Then, we see the open door over her shoulder with only Sayago's hand visible -- as she tries to shut the door, he blocks her by putting his hand on the door and the camera, then, swiftly (and inexorably) re-positions to film him frontally on the threshold of the widow's home. The motif of closing doors cites similar imagery in John Ford's The Searchers. Certainly, Time to Die, which won many Mexican awards, is one of the most impressive debuts by a young director in film history. (The Blu-ray restoration of the film made in 2016 features a dialogue commentary by Ripstein and the man who played Pedro Trueba in the film -- the commentary is amusing for a few minutes because it is so ineptly translated: someone seems to have translated the Spanish literally without regard for English idiom or syntax and it's mostly impossible to know what Ripstein and the actor are actually saying. )
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