Saturday, March 22, 2014

"There strength is in our numbers" - César Chávez


 This year’s Berlinale showed César Chávez, the four-year endeavor by Mexican production company Canana, directed by one of its founders, actor Diego Luna.  The screening took place in the Special Gala section, showcasing recent films for which a spot was not found in the competition or in the edgier Panorama or Forum.   However, I caught one of the pre-release screenings of the film at U.C.L.A on March 7, in an event organized by the aptly named César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies, with the support of other campus institutions and groups.  It was a well-attended event; the 300-seat James Bridges theater, in the Film and Television Department, could not accommodate the multitude of young people waiting outside.


With Diego Luna in attendance, as well producer Pablo Cruz and Arturo Rodríguez, the current president of the United Farm Works, the union César Chávez and other labor leaders founded in 1962.  The event mixed celebrity and labor politics in an interesting way: at the end of the screening and Q&A, the young students, mostly Hispanic, left both informed about a figure they see on a pantheon, from afar, and with a serviceable understanding of labor politics.  Overall, it seemed to me, they took home the notion of a struggle for human dignity – and one, for this first generation Americans of Mexican and Central American parents - not far from their family experience.


I was very moved by this film, that traces eight key years in the life of Chávez and his collaborators, from 1962 to1970, as labor organizers in the California Central Valley (with the northern Mexican state of Sonora standing for the fields of Delano, California; hats to the set and costume designers for the period look). Against all odds, they succeed after years of struggles, including strikes and boycotts, in bringing the growers to the negotiating table; most importantly, they make the plight of migrant workers a topic in the national conversation.

Before the screening, what most intrigued me were the negotiations – historical, cultural, linguistic, religious – that the Mexican producing team must have had with itself, the U.S. screenwriters who shaped the project as a classical Hollywood narrative, and the realities of the box-office.  Among the various issues on the table, the fact that César Chávez is an American, not a Mexican figure, and yet the film had no studio financial backing; the language spoken in the film is 90% English; the target market, international; and the fact that it had a relatively modest budget of $10 million, provided by various Mexican and foreign investors.

After the screening was over, three things came into sharper focus:  how warmly Mexican this film is in its portrayal of family and community; how American (as in Hollywood American) in making a father/son relationship its dramatic linchpin; and what a beautiful case of the Catholic imagination informing a work of popular culture.   Ideas intrinsic to the Catholic worldview, like mediation, sacramentality and communion are embedded in the narrative and visual fabric of this César Chávez.  Understandably so, given the subject matter and the historical record, but not to be taken for granted. The recent Philomena about the actions of Irish nuns could be an interesting study in contrast, since Stephen Frears has acknowledged his anti-Catholic stance in dealing with a Catholic story.

The dangers of hagiography are quite skillfully skirted, in large part by the terrific performances of Michael Peña, who has the physique du role as Chávez, father of 8 young children, yet pulled away by the demands of his job; America Ferrrera as his no nonsense wife; Rosario Dawson as her legendary strong-willed collaborator Dolores Huerta.  The story moves back and forth between the public and private personas of Chávez, making him a flesh-and-blood hero, and also a Christ-like mediator with the unflinching mission, like Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, of fighting for the little people. 

The encounter in 1966 between Chávez and Robert Kennedy (Jack Holmes), then senator in a fact-finding agricultural mission in California, is one of the emotional peaks of the film, and one made to carry explicitly its overarching theme: the value of each person, and the dignity of manual work.  In this vein, the 1960 Edward Morrow’s heart-breaking television documentary, Harvest of Shame, that makes an appearance in my documentary class each semester, and the recent Ethel, Rory Kennedy’s valentine to her parents, make moving companions to César Chávez.

John Malkovich, as the self-made grape grower Bogdanovitch (speaking decent Spanish on screen) makes a strong presence as Chávez’ antagonist.  (He is listed as one of the picture’s producers.)  His nuanced character is a notable contrast to the other cartoonish meanies in the film – courtesy of crosscutting editing and the use of television news, Nixon manages to become an archenemy of the people.

For Hispanics, and those sensitive to the Mexican religious traditions of the simple folks, the warm treatment of Catholic iconography is a delight: the Virgen de Guadalupe, first and foremost, the quiet presence of priests, the celebrations of the mass, the pilgrimages. In other words, the fervor with which the teachings of the Gospel translate into action. 

If someone could get Pope Francis to see the film, I have no doubt that he would note that it is a knockout tool for spreading the good news that we are all children of God.  What an endorsement that would be!








Monday, March 17, 2014

Archeological dig: Susan Oliver … Susan who?

I didn’t grow up in the U.S., but we did watch a lot of American TV shows in Buenos Aires:  our favorites in the 60s were El hombre del rifle, Randall el justiciero, Bonanza, Los Beverly ricos,  La ley del revolver, Bat Masterson, Annie Oakley, Rin Tin Tin, Father Knows Best, El Zorro, Aventuras en el paraiso, all of them shown in the afternoon.  We were too young to watch the evening series: Los defensores, El fugitivo, Perry Mason, Ben Casey, Dr. Kildaire, Los intocables, La dimension desconocida, Ruta 66, 77 Sunset Strip, La caldera del Diablo.  We only knew their titles in Spanish, and since they were dubbed in Spanish too, we could not practice the English learned in school every morning.  My sisters and I have fond recollections of these shows; we can still hum their catchy tunes: “Tombstone territory …” was a favorite, as was the music imitating galloping horses in .
Bonanza

All this to say that we did not know the names, lives and gossip associated with these American television stars.  So it’s not a surprise that I have no recollection of the name and beautiful features of one interesting lady, Susan Oliver.  Her IMDb credits run several pages –127 entries listing guest roles in these and many other series, from the 1960s to the 80s.   You can quickly sketch a familiar story: one of those young actresses coming from New York to Los Angeles; a contract with Warner Bros; a few roles in features (she’s the cohort of Yvette Mimieux, Angie Dickinson and Eva-Marie Saint), a passage through the directing workshop a the AFI, some TV directing and death of cancer at 58.  The jump into stardom – at the tail end of the studio system in the fifties - never materialized.  One is reminded of her story watching the recent and ultimately heart-breaking Academy-award documentary 20 Feet from Stardom, a beautiful portrait of back-up singers whose solo careers never pan out.

Susan Oliver, the stage name of Charlotte Gercke (1932-1990), is the subject of a fascinating documentary by George A. Pappy Jr., one of my students in the MA in Screenwriting at Cal State Northridge a few years ago.  This is George’s third feature-length film, and his first documentary.  It deserves the best of luck, including a theatrical release and a solid cable life, besides DVD and VOD releases.  It makes you laugh and cry, and ponder the price life exacts on your dreams and aspirations, and how a good or bad choice (its nature becoming obvious in hindsight) can change one’s course. 

A triumph of research, clip choices and editing, the documentary combines two threads, the biographic and the historic, involving thirty years of film and television, from the 50s to the 80s.     Utilizing archival materials, including family photos and memorabilia found on E-Bay, and well chosen talking heads, ranging from family, friends and experts, the director – who also wrote and produced the documentary – structures the story in  Kane narrative around a mystery: who was Susan Oliver? (I asked some friends, very knowledgeable about American popular culture, and they couldn’t quite place her.  They did recall the sexy Green Girl of the title, the character Vina in a two-part episode of the first season of Star Trek (1966-69).  

The audience builds an image of this classy blue-eyed blonde, with a raspy voice, by combining multiple perspectives, all of them with something interesting to comment.   Each case is nicely – and sometimes very cleverly – illustrated by a myriad film and TV clips – from Butterfield 8 (1960) and The Disorderly Orderly (1964) to series everybody my age watched in American television growing up.  

The ‘Rosebud’ of this film is a poignant line from a friend: “She was a square that did not fit into the circle”. The wisely placed emotional climax of the film is the actress’ last phone message, a tacit and elegant farewell to life, acknowledging its joys and sorrows.  (I may not have been the only one wiping off  a tear …)

The Green Girl is also a case study on how to handle a film biography, sifting through massive materials – in this case 80 hours of television series, some better preserved than others – and looking for thematic tie-ins. Even though there is no narrator, the way the film has been edited allows for a clear understanding of Oliver’s life and times, with the best lines from the interviewees pushing the story forward.  Editor Amy Glickman Brown, a graduate from the Tisch School of the Arts, should take all the credit, the director noted in the Q&A after the film, shown in the Royal Laemmle, West Los Angeles, on Saturday March 15.  She handled vast materials, with various sound and visual quality issues, creatively and in a mere ten-week period.  The music is by Lyle Workman, an accomplished musician and a relative of Susan Oliver; it showcases the dramatic essence of the story, that of an actress born ten years too late – she arrives in Hollywood when the studio system is collapsing – or ten years too early – before women started to be more visible behind the camera.

George Pappy, who financed The Green Girl with Kickstarter and Indigogo campaigns, joins the ranks of directors/producers who become their own distributors in the digital age. He plans to attend the market at the Canadian International Documentary Festival next month in Toronto, and is working on a VOD release by the summer. 

In the cyber world, the way to know more about this film is by clicking on the following links:        http://www.thegreengirlmovie.com/


Someone in HBO documentaries should be paying attention to a work that could smartly complement their recent showing of Love, Marilyn, a well-known story unconventionally told by Liz Garbus.



Friday, March 14, 2014

Before the flood: Noah reaches the screen

Before the (film) flood: biblical hero or a conflicted superhero?

 The case of Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, to be released in the U.S. at the end of March, can be tackled from at least two different but complementary perspectives. 

One is the numbers’ perspective.  It is related to the stunning box-office success of The Passion of the Christ in 2004, that opened the door to projects interested in capturing that same massive audience, which in the US can be characterized as Christian, conservative, evangelical.  The film’s success was also linked to an innovative marketing campaign that connected with a mass audience intimately familiar with the story.  Subsequent films did not yield the box-office the studios had expected, like The Nativity Story (2006).  Noah is going after the audience that responded warmly to Mel Gibson’s
film.

The other perspective has to do with storytelling and poetic license – the esthetic approach. Noah is one of the great heroes of the Hebrew Scriptures, together with Moses and David.  They can - and have - received the ‘hero’ treatment in the Hollywood tradition of the great spectacles.  Cecil B. De Mille’s two versions of Moses in The Ten Commandments (1923 and 1956) are emblematic of this treatment: the films offer a ‘literal’ approach to story and characters, using cutting-edge special effects at the time.  The 1950s and 60s biblical epics function the same way, by treading on a familiar territory – whether historical in the films about Christ, The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), or imaginative fictionalizations, like Quo Vadis (1951), The Robe (1953) and Ben-Hur (1959).  Biblical stories go back to the beginnings of Hollywood, with D.W.Griffith’s Intolerance (1916), which makes the teachings and Passion of Christ the moral linchpin of the film.

In my opinion, this literal approach – which also implies a biblical interpretation traditionally agreed upon by the Jewish and Christian faithful – also coincided with the shared moral and cultural landscape, rooted in Judeo-Christian values, in place until the fractures of the 1960s.   There is no such shared consensus today.  That’s why a film such as The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) was polemical:  it proposed a radical interpretation of the human side of the Lord, an ordinary man without a mission, and Saint Paul as a political operator.  The transcendental dimension of Christ, the Son of God, did not exist.

According to what I have read, Noah offers not only a non-traditional interpretation, but also a modern context and agenda - the environment and overpopulation – that may err on the side of secularism, putting a question mark on the religious dimension of the story.  Painting Noah as a conflicted hero, along the lines of the recent Batman, Superman and Thor, will not endear the film to audiences with set expectations about story, character and above all, meaning.

This Noah seems more pitched at the youth quadrant – The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Avatar folks – with its state-of-the art special effects and self-doubting superheroes.

There might be a disconnect between the faith-based audience Paramount studios wants to reach, and a film that is primarily an epic struggle of survival and family.  The parallel with last year’s World War Z is relevant, since before this expensive film opened, its potential box-office success was a big unknown for Paramount.

Personally, I am intrigued by the handling of Noah’s story, a topic that is integral to the larger story of God’s covenant with humankind – at the Judeo-Christian heart of the Western civilization.  I am also curious to see if the film understands Noah – if not literally, as director Aronofsky has noted – as an emblematic human figure engaged in a personal relationship with a God who created us to his image and resemblance.