It’s a funny thing when some of the year’s best films aren’t films that anyone would seriously consider as Best Picture contenders. We know the way the Oscar race works by now. Oscar buzz should always come with a caveat: Oscar buzz for worthy stars. It doesn’t really cover the outsiders very well. The last thing it is, really, is what it’s supposed to be: a reward for the year’s best. It hardly ever is that. Every so often the person standing on stage with the gold statue is one almost everyone agrees deserves the award for the work they’ve done. So much of it is “the story.” How did they get there? Who were they before? How far have they come? How much are they owed? What has been their contribution? How well are they liked?
So it is unlikely that an actor like Demian Bichir can realistically break into the Best Actor race. Not with the star power at play in that category, not with the hotter than hot movie stars who have their places already in line. But just because he might not crack the big five is no reason to not talk about Bichir and Christopher Weitz’ moving and relevant film A Better Life.
The film is really not much without its two central performances, Bichir and his son, played by Jose Julian. It is into their difficult story that we find ourselves on the other side of the immigration debate. To earn the sympathy of viewers with mixed feeling about the issue requires father and son be good, nearly perfect people. But one doesn’t expect the level of humanity either actor brings to their roles. Bichir is an actor who inhabits his character comfortably. His warm coat, his jeans, his shoes, his wallet, his cap – he is someone you’d see anywhere on the streets of LA. We know this man. And yet, Bichir gives us a closer look, a complex and complicated man who must acknowledge his “place” in American culture, find the strength to parent his child without losing his pride, and be resourceful enough to find work. It is a deceptively simple portrayal until you see what Bichir is really capable of as an actor, when he lets it all go — only then do you reflect back at the many different shades of the character Bichir accessed. It is beautifully rendered, deeply moving and unforgettable.
While it’s true that Manohla Dargis of the New York Times, who called the film “emotionally resonant,” also nailed it for its lefty politics, and yes, no right winger is going to watch that film and not think about illegals driving around with no driver’s license or all of the mouths we have to feed and children we have to educate, the anchor babies and the papers please and all of the ways the “illegals” are ruining life here in Los Angeles. Apparently director Weitz was adamant about saying the film was non-partisan. And while that may be so, to simply sympathize with Mexican illegal immigrants is to take a political stance.
I knew a guy once who thought it was funny to drive over to where the illegals would line up at the Home Depot for work in the morning just to watch them attach themselves to his truck so he could laugh and drive off. I don’t remember who that guy was but I’m hoping he caught his own fresh hell in one way or another. If you grow up in Los Angeles you are in this dynamic every day, on one side or the other, and you must address your feelings on the subject in one way or another. The din of right-wing radio whipping up a bigoted furor over illegals day in and day out presents its side loudly and clearly. But very few are willing to go down the road and tell the story from the other side — the underside. Despite the growing population of Mexican-Americans here, and despite their economic contribution to our state, and despite the amount of money they put into buying movie tickets, the image reflected back at us at the movies is largely of our white community. Very few films are made about the Latino community that we co-exist with every day of our lives here.
I disagree with the filmmakers and maybe with the publicity team. I don’t think you should not talk about the elephant in the room – I think you should go there. How many parents wouldn’t risk traveling outside of Mexico to El Norte for a better life when there is nothing but poverty and drugs back home? Why wouldn’t they come here, work here, and struggle to give their kids what they didn’t have? Isn’t that what so many all over the world did? Isn’t that how America was made? But the doors have at last closed. The angry mobs have mostly won the illegal debate — any right-winger who shows any sympathy whatsoever is exiled. Liberals seem too afraid to confront the angry mob so they too are now being “tough on illegal immigration.”
I don’t really have the answer to the “illegal immigration” problem but A Better Life should, I think, be right in there as way to remind us of the human side of those we imagine are cramming themselves into tiny apartments, driving around with no license or registration, using our health clinics and schools. The human side is that they’re people, families, dads, sons, aunts, sisters. Yes, they’re forming gangs because what other options do they have? A Better Life shows the options – deportation, working illegally, marrying a US citizen. If you are here illegally you don’t have many options that are within the law – yet you can’t go home because what then?
I think it’s a subject worth arguing about. And I hope that people see A Better Life and that it leads to more discussions about the life or death struggle by people who are really just trying to feed themselves and their families.
But this is a controversial subject and I’m way off course. The point is, Bichir turns in one of the year’s best performances. I’ll leave you with what the Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday said about Bichir:
If “A Better Life” falls into too-pat schematic order at times, its emotional pull is undeniable, thanks in large part to Bichir’s quietly potent performance of a good man who’s incapable of doing the wrong thing until he does. Without a scintilla of showboating or begging for the audience’s sympathy, Bichir never allows Carlos to be a victim, instead giving him the dignity of his choices: good and bad, smart and dumb, legal and illegal.
“A Better Life” might not change any minds about immigration policy, but it illuminates the conversation with context, compassion and understanding. And by the time Carlos utters the film’s heart-stopper of a final line, audiences may feel ambivalent about where he’s going, but they’ll have a newly awakened sense of where he’s coming from.
