Whose 'Better Life' Is It Anyway?
Against the backdrop of this weekend's all-American celebrations, one of the more talked-about indie films coming out is the story of an immigrant Mexican gardener in America, hoping for 'A Better Life' for himself and his teenage son.
Noted director Chris Weitz (whose peripatetic film canon includes everything from About a Boy to American Pie to Twilight: New Moon) last looked at the business world and political climate in 2004's nifty dramedy In Good Company (arguably the best of the above). But while Company was set in the white-collar world in the relatively strong economy of 2004, A Better Life is a gritty and claustrophobic look at the unglamorous and alternate world of the South-Central LA barrio, written by Eric Eason and Roger L. Simon and produced by the veteran Witt-Thomas company. (The same Witt-Thomas team, along with Paul Junger Witt's wife, Susan Harris, created socially conscious comedy classics like Soap, Benson, and The Golden Girls.)
The story -- more than vaguely reminiscent of (superior) reference points like The Bicycle Thief, Vittorio de Sica's neorealist touchstone Shoeshine, and even Les Miserables -- regards a Mexican immigrant gardener named Carlos (Mexico's respected film star Demian Bichir) whose Mexican-born boss is taking his own savings from US work and returning to buy a farm in Mexico. The boss offers to sell his truck and gardening equipment at Blue Book to his loyal employee, which still requires both Carlos and his sister and brother-in-law's meager life savings. But a day laborer with whom Carlos has worked before steals his newly-acquired truck and equipment for a quickie sale to a chop-shop. While most of us would simply pick up the phone and call the cops or the insurance company, Carlos doesn't have that option -- he dares not report the crime to la policia for fear of being sent back. So Carlos, along with his hotheaded 15-year-old, American-born son Luis (Jose Julian), set out amidst the flophouses, carnecerias, and norteno rodeos of their 'hood, looking to reclaim their last chance at the film's title before it's too late.
The New York Times' Manohla Dargis rightly ridiculed director Weitz's oft-quoted and ridiculous allegation that his movie "didn't really have a political agenda." What horse-hockey, what sanctimonious drivel. A movie about an illegal Mexican immigrant and his gang-bait teenage son, set against the backdrop of the DREAM Act (which is all but referenced in the film), the Arizona lawsuit, and the Great Recession doesn't have a political agenda? (I suppose Weitz thinks there wasn't a racial aspect to "birtherism" or the Willie Horton ad, either.) A Better Life drips politics, frame by frame.
In the same way, it does no one any favors to turn A Better Life into fun-for-everyone "universal" blather; it's a specifically Hispanic (or at least minority) story, about the separate, unequal, and self-contained life in the urban barrio. Which should make it all the more relevant for thinking film fans on either side of this political climate, unless one only goes to movies and watches TV shows where all the characters look and act exactly like oneself.
Of this father and son duo, the 15-year-old Luis actually seems like the more battle-scarred and cynical of the two. The hotheaded teen's idea of acting tough is from street gangstas, rappers, and colorful movie and TV villains and pimps, while Carlos knows that the true toughness in life is one of stoic endurance, of uncomplaining masculine code, of being able to "keep your head about you when all about you are losing theirs", as Kipling once said.
Yet the movie also makes clear that what Luis is perhaps maddest at is the sight of his father acting what African-Americans once called "ooftah" (pandering, minstrel-like) around other people -- and the horror of young Luis' realization that this servility and humbleness has become his otherwise macho, masculino father's default mode in order to survive. Carlos keeps his head down and avoids trouble, is deferential to authority (including the LAPD and the INS) and is almost apologetic, even to the man who stole his truck from him(!) And we can see why watching that almost masochistic self-abuse could faintly sicken an otherwise good, if rebellious and hormonal, teenage kid. Carlos is saintly -- but he's scary, too.
Luis spends his time watching reality TV shows like Cribs and America's Got Talent, even as Carlos tends to the 4,000 square foot, two-acre lot pool homes of Beverly Hills, Brentwood and Malibu. So tantalizingly within reach; so close, and yet so far. One can practically hear Judy Garland or Ella Fitzgerald going, "They're singing songs of love, but not for me." (For that matter, Luis prefers urban rap to the banda and nortena strains of his father's generation.) Carlos has accepted these things; his idea of a 'better life' is simply entering the somewhat-assimilated lower-middle class with a chance at college for his son, instead of paycheck-to-paycheck, "wetback" barrio poverty and gangland high schools. But Luis, as much a product of our conspicuous-consumption, Jersey Shore and Big Brother culture as he is of multi-culturalism, wants more -- a lot more. And with Luis' best friend eagerly auditioning for his big brother's gang and the drug/pimp business, Carlos is silent-scream terrified that his son will use those means to try and get all the 'bling' and street-respect he so wants.
Critics of A Better Life have correctly pointed out the simpleness of the story and characters, and the sitcom-like preachiness of its idealized portrayal of a Hispanic immigrant. But that's the one area where the film's "not political" and "universal" aspects somewhat make up for it. When Carlos first gets his truck and drives to work rather than taking the bus, when he climbs a tree to trim it and sees anew the vista of the Santa Monica mountains with his shiny truck gleaming below, without saying a word Bechir makes you know he's feeling the same thing Leonardo DiCaprio did when he shouted, "I'm king of the world!" And when we see his truck being jacked, we're desperately running with Carlos down the driveway. The movie's best moments come from its character study of a father and son, and its multicultural updating of the first and second generation stories and themes of immigrants from the last century -- a real Dreams From My Father.
A Better Life, like Crash before it, is somewhat dated, more of a piece with the "hood" stories that defined the last recession's urban films (Colors, Falling Down, Boyz in the Hood, Do The Right Thing). Yet as a pungent reminder of what hasn't gone away and the problems that still haven't been solved, it may be more symbolic of the Great Recession's racial and economic polarizations than ever.