Saturday, October 20, 2012
ILLEGAL
Today's movie was Chris Weitz'
A Mexican illegal, a gardener, living in LA with his 14 year old son has been successful at staying in the US and getting a regular job.
Now, with the son caught between the straight life and a gang life, the gardener takes a chance and buys the truck of his boss.
Trouble ensues and his life unravels in a way that threatens both his chances of staying here and the relationship he has with his son.
This is a carefully wrought drama that is probably being played out around me here on a regular basis. In this city.
The stakes are as high as they can be.
Weitz has managed not only to tell the story of this small family but, at the same time, show how their lives lie just around the corner and just over there from our more comfortable circumstances. We see this from scene to scene. It is not hammered in. But it is hard not to notice that the problems of the gardener's kind clients are not anything like his.
The son is rebellious and resentful for a father who is not there for him because he is working. The father does not understand his son's interest in other things than school.
They are walking a tightrope.
Will they get across?
Much of this film is painful to watch but it is also full of love and caring, thoughtful acts which make a kind of redemption for the pain.
The immigration system is shown in all its inflexibility and arbitrary action but we are led to realize that this is necessary as well. A sickness that all of us share. There are small acts of kindness, nevertheless, that makes the difference.
I liked this film very much even though, at times, it was wrenching to watch. Weitz can be trusted to treat us with small acts of kindness as well and to see the story through to a satisfying ending. Maybe not the ending we wanted but a resolution of a kind.
I would be willing to see this again because I know how it turns out and wouldn't be holding the edge of my seat.
I will give it a 4 out of Netflix5.
Labels: films
