Nicole Mejia’s A PLACE IN THE FIELD: Santa Barbara Film Festival Review: us through a veteran’s redemptive journey back to himself

Nicole Mejia’s A PLACE IN THE FIELD: Santa Barbara Film Festival Review.

When first we meet Giovanni “Gio” Scuderi (Green Book‘s Don DiPetta), he’s washing his car. Soon thereafter, he’s burying a dog by the side of the road. A coyote, even, for reasons that become metaphysically significant later. Then he’s wood-working in his workshop, within eyesight of a sign reading “Church of Deplorables.”

Yes, this is Texas. And to outside eyes, at least, Gio is a pretty uncomplicated guy.

Viewing him from outside eyes is the point for a lot of A Place in the Field‘s running time. He’s a veteran, and he’s clearly been affected by time served. But neither his actions, his conversation, nor his eyes are inclined to let you in. As filmed from the point of view of director Nicole Mejia, the movie, which just made its world premiere at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, seeks the answer to that perennial question wives always ask husbands: What are you thinking?

And like so many guys, his thoughts wander. But they’re forced to focus when a suicide note from a combat buddy arrives alongside a guidebook and a stack of $100 bills. A promise made in life will be held by guilt after death, especially since the guy’s cremated remains show up in a package alongside. The road trip they swore they’d take together must be done, even if one of them’s stuck inside an urn the whole time.

Though nobody masks in the movie, there’s an implication that COVID is in play, and as such Gio’s medically employed girlfriend (Mishel Prada) has to move to the city, at least for a while. She wants him to come too. He asks, “You wanna spend more time with me, or you wanna watch over me?” Neither option ought to be bad. But the promise to the dead beckons more.

And he won’t be alone. An old friend (Khorri Ellis) shows up to make the trip with him, occasionally serving as a reminder to do things he forgets. And when circumstances sidetrack the trip as intended, he’s there for support…sometimes.

There’s very little trick to taking a camera out in the desert and making it look beautiful. But there is a trick to moving it in a way that moves the story, and threading the images together, which Mejia does as she parallels the wide open spaces the road trip takes with the battlefield both men once saw. In a rare American cinematic acknowledgment that the Middle East isn’t just sand, the war flashbacks are very much NOT desert, though they are relatively deserted. And in those mine-laden fields occasionally punctuated with burned-out cars, there’s a symmetry with Texas’ open spaces, which are just as likely to sport vehicle carcasses. But fortunately not human ones as well. Gio doesn’t have to tell anyone why this is a comfortable space for him – the juxtapositions speak louder.

This isn’t the kind of movie where the traumatized man gets some big, tearful catharsis. Dreams and visions offer access to his mind, and small moments of talking help. And while there is a big development that viewers might figure out just before it hits in full, the movie steadfastly refuses to offer absolute confirmation. But the clues are there all along.

Part of Mejia’s goal in making the film was to represent the Latino veteran point of view, using magical realism and other cultural touchstones. The result feels nonetheless universal, though the coyote metaphor that reoccurs feels specific. In addition to being desert creatures who howl, coyotes are also symbolic of tricksters, and the nickname for folks who smuggle migrants across borders. Without spoiling, those meanings all come into play. There’s metaphysical trickery at work, and Gio is, in some way, “smuggling” himself, via the pretext of a promised trip with a friend, to get across his own internal border.

Is the field in which the characters are to find a place a battlefield, or perhaps the metaphorical Elysian Field for dead heroes? On that, the viewer may ruminate. But in the field of vision, which matters most to an audience, Mejia has been a potent guide.