This movie wants "A better Life"-- don't we all?
When I was 14, I saw a film called "El Norte" it was about a brother and sister pair who brave all sorts of travails to travel north from Mexico to make it to the promised land of the United States. I watched it in preparation for a mission trip to Mexico I was going to make with my church youth group. I hardly believed one thing in the film to be true. Three months later, I saw for myself, while doing a vacation bible school in a dump, that it was quite true. Flash forward a few years more than ten and add to my life experience a decade in the city of Angels. Now I watch the film "A Better Life" and I believe every frame (minus the accents).
"A Better Life" opens on a gardner in Los Angeles. I probably jogged past him on my runs through Toluca Lake numerous times, or passed him while tutoring one of my many clients in Beverly Hills. He could have been anyone who, to me, was another nice gardner with a language I didn't understand, and a life I didn't really want.
Let me preface this review by putting into context my own stereotypes and assuming they are much like your own. To me, gardening was/is something midwesterners do because they have to. To me, mowing lawns is for teenagers. To me, hispanics liked living in east L.A. with 'their people', and riding the bus was, to me, a drudgery proving that I was a loser, but to anyone speaking spanish it was just a way of life.
Now I'm writing out the converse of my arguments. I never actually thought these things, but it was implied in my whining whenever my car was in the shop; or whenever I drove my beat up Jetta to the market and a friend would pull up in their BMW. It was implied when I would lament to my friends that I lived so near the ghetto by MacArther Park while they got to live in West L.A. or better... Santa Monica! It was implied when I would talk with people about the american dream and how anyone can make it if they just 'try' and educate themselves properly. It was the mid-20's version of my 18 year old self who once declared, "I know everything" (yes, those words actually passed my lips).
Why do I admit all of these things? I do so to give a context to the power of the film "A Better Life". Life in Los Angeles changed me, I know now that what I saw portrayed was real, and is true.
Our gardner friend has a son, and he also has a pretty nice job-- as the lone worker for a man with a truck who has cashed in his american dream and now wants to move back to Mexico. He is willing to sell Manuel, our anti hero, his truck and let him have all of his customers. 'And you--' he says so confidently, 'Can have the dream too!'. Manuel is afraid, however, he is illegal and doesn't have a drivers license. 'imagine what will happen to you' his boss says, 'if you DON'T buy my truck?' So our plot unfolds.
Manuel borrows money from his sister to pay for the truck. He is living large. He buys a crucifix and a bobble headed virgin Mary to bless the dash. He stops by his son's school to say 'hello' and tell him that they could now look forward to a better life. And things go well for Manuel... for about 73 more seconds of the film.
I cannot bear to tell you what happens, for I actually had to skip past it. The cliche of the foolish/trusting/impoverished/uneducated worker is so over done that i could predict to a micro-second what would happen and when-- and then it did; but if you can forgive the ham handed plot device and the hair tugging annoyance of watching it, yet again, in an american film about a political/foreign issue; I still think that there is merit to this film.
What unfolds after the duping/trusting/idiocy of the knuckle dragging moment of the script is a beautiful father/son tale. The son, an american citizen, is so near joining a gang to please his girlfriend; the departure of the truck and all it symbolized is actually a good thing. The generational gap between father and son is evident not only in their ages and how they see the world, but moreover how the one is illegal and constantly guided by that fact and the other has no risk of deportation.
What transpires is predictable, and often could be construed as heavy handed. Chris Weiz obviously is passionate about the immigration issue or he would not have written, produced and directed this film; but please forgive his misgivings and watch it anyway. I don't doubt for a second that things like this happen every day and the moral of the story for me is this one:
Because your family came here a hundred years ago on a boat, or twenty years ago on a plane or a thousand years ago on an ice bridge or ten thousand years ago by the breath of God being placed in them in some totally awesome garden (thanks a lot you two); we ALL are on foreign soil, of a birth we don't deserve and a life we do not control. We have no additional merit for where we went to school or if we went to school at all; what we make in a year or who we know ("it's not WHAT you know but WHO you know"). We are all here by grace and we can all have it taken away in the slash of a knife.
A certain speaker who was honored a week ago today said something once about judging people on the 'content of their character' which is a good guide post when wandering through the desert to get El Norte, but I have an even better one spoken by a different preacher who we honor (hopefully) a little more often. He said, 'judge not lest ye be judged'-- And it was that, in me, that was struck to the forefront by this film. All of the latent stereotyping and arrogances were exposed in my own heart; and it disgusted me.
the last image of the film made me think of my youth group all those years ago: it was the father, with a water bottle trying to return to his son. His only words? "Let's go home."
Now, THAT, would be a better life.
"A Better Life" opens on a gardner in Los Angeles. I probably jogged past him on my runs through Toluca Lake numerous times, or passed him while tutoring one of my many clients in Beverly Hills. He could have been anyone who, to me, was another nice gardner with a language I didn't understand, and a life I didn't really want.
Let me preface this review by putting into context my own stereotypes and assuming they are much like your own. To me, gardening was/is something midwesterners do because they have to. To me, mowing lawns is for teenagers. To me, hispanics liked living in east L.A. with 'their people', and riding the bus was, to me, a drudgery proving that I was a loser, but to anyone speaking spanish it was just a way of life.
Now I'm writing out the converse of my arguments. I never actually thought these things, but it was implied in my whining whenever my car was in the shop; or whenever I drove my beat up Jetta to the market and a friend would pull up in their BMW. It was implied when I would lament to my friends that I lived so near the ghetto by MacArther Park while they got to live in West L.A. or better... Santa Monica! It was implied when I would talk with people about the american dream and how anyone can make it if they just 'try' and educate themselves properly. It was the mid-20's version of my 18 year old self who once declared, "I know everything" (yes, those words actually passed my lips).
Why do I admit all of these things? I do so to give a context to the power of the film "A Better Life". Life in Los Angeles changed me, I know now that what I saw portrayed was real, and is true.
Our gardner friend has a son, and he also has a pretty nice job-- as the lone worker for a man with a truck who has cashed in his american dream and now wants to move back to Mexico. He is willing to sell Manuel, our anti hero, his truck and let him have all of his customers. 'And you--' he says so confidently, 'Can have the dream too!'. Manuel is afraid, however, he is illegal and doesn't have a drivers license. 'imagine what will happen to you' his boss says, 'if you DON'T buy my truck?' So our plot unfolds.
Manuel borrows money from his sister to pay for the truck. He is living large. He buys a crucifix and a bobble headed virgin Mary to bless the dash. He stops by his son's school to say 'hello' and tell him that they could now look forward to a better life. And things go well for Manuel... for about 73 more seconds of the film.
I cannot bear to tell you what happens, for I actually had to skip past it. The cliche of the foolish/trusting/impoverished/uneducated worker is so over done that i could predict to a micro-second what would happen and when-- and then it did; but if you can forgive the ham handed plot device and the hair tugging annoyance of watching it, yet again, in an american film about a political/foreign issue; I still think that there is merit to this film.
What unfolds after the duping/trusting/idiocy of the knuckle dragging moment of the script is a beautiful father/son tale. The son, an american citizen, is so near joining a gang to please his girlfriend; the departure of the truck and all it symbolized is actually a good thing. The generational gap between father and son is evident not only in their ages and how they see the world, but moreover how the one is illegal and constantly guided by that fact and the other has no risk of deportation.
What transpires is predictable, and often could be construed as heavy handed. Chris Weiz obviously is passionate about the immigration issue or he would not have written, produced and directed this film; but please forgive his misgivings and watch it anyway. I don't doubt for a second that things like this happen every day and the moral of the story for me is this one:
Because your family came here a hundred years ago on a boat, or twenty years ago on a plane or a thousand years ago on an ice bridge or ten thousand years ago by the breath of God being placed in them in some totally awesome garden (thanks a lot you two); we ALL are on foreign soil, of a birth we don't deserve and a life we do not control. We have no additional merit for where we went to school or if we went to school at all; what we make in a year or who we know ("it's not WHAT you know but WHO you know"). We are all here by grace and we can all have it taken away in the slash of a knife.
A certain speaker who was honored a week ago today said something once about judging people on the 'content of their character' which is a good guide post when wandering through the desert to get El Norte, but I have an even better one spoken by a different preacher who we honor (hopefully) a little more often. He said, 'judge not lest ye be judged'-- And it was that, in me, that was struck to the forefront by this film. All of the latent stereotyping and arrogances were exposed in my own heart; and it disgusted me.
the last image of the film made me think of my youth group all those years ago: it was the father, with a water bottle trying to return to his son. His only words? "Let's go home."
Now, THAT, would be a better life.
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