A Better Life: The Undocumented Dream

Yesterday, I pulled a muscle in my shoulder. Working out, I went for a little too much weight and paid the price. Later, my parking validation didn’t read on a scanner, and I wound up paying double what I should. Frustrated, I returned home and promptly broke two plates in the process of making dinner. Then I argued with my father on the phone, over a total non-issue that unfortunately became the focus of the night. I sat down to do the difficult work of script re-writing, and stayed up much later than I intended. Although partially due to a video game I’d been meaning to get to, it didn’t help with my restless sleep, or the pain of tossing and turning on a moderately injured arm while the white noise soundscapes app on my iPad lulled me to oblivion.

Today I went to see A Better Life, which told me to shut the hell up.

Not nearly that politely.

A Better Life follows a Carlos Galindo (Demián Bichir), an illegal Mexican immigrant living in East Los Angeles and working in Beverly Hills as a landscaper. When his boss (of their two person operation) decides to move back home, Carlos is given the option to buy his boss’ truck and tools, without which he’ll be forced to return to the position of day-laborer, groveling in front of hardware stores instead of having a regular job with rich customers. Carlos is hesitant, since he doesn’t have the money and knows without a license that any police pull-over, even for a busted tail light, could result in his exportation. But his mind is made up for him when his teenage son Luis (Jose Julian) gets expelled from school for fighting. Knowing that only a boosted income may help move Luis away from the gangland lifestyle, Carlos leans on his sister, who married into American wealth, for a loan.

Carlos’ launch into the American dream doesn’t last long, as two days later, his truck is stolen literally right out from under him. Unable to go to the authorities for help, Carlos takes to the street, aided by his distant yet determined teenage son.

What follows is a father-son adventure in pursuit of survival and growth that manages to hit all the same chords as The Road without the post-apocalyptic setting. Although, that depends what you think of East Los Angeles… Which develops into a character in its own right. The perfectly selected location shooting, dialects, cultures, and even swear words makes this a true homage to a city and people rarely shown, not only in cinema, but throughout all media. And the effort to make each detail as accurate as possible shines through as an honestly, thoughtfully crafted film for director Chris Weitz (About A Boy).

Like any great societal message picture, A Better Life seems expertly designed for award season fodder, and I was suspicious of whether it would be the kind of film that pandered its way to the finish line. Thankfully, Weitz has made a film that earns it’s praise through fantastic acting turns in both Bichir and Julian, and a gritty yet human world where every character is as perfectly balanced between likeable and flawed, from the street cop down to the gangbanger.

It’s the approach to this duality which makes the film fascinating to watch. Carlos is an honest man who would prefer to be invisible while making a better life for his son, but also for the community around him. Luis, however, dreams of an extravagant lifestyle that can never be realized, pities his father’s efforts, and is suspicious and antagonistic towards the entire world. As father and son encounter difficulties in their quest, Luis is always quick to anger and thinks even those who aide them deserve nothing but scorn, while his father holds to his word and shares humanity with even their most vile enemies, because if nothing else, Carlos has struggled and lost enough to know why men can lose their way.

The real fear here, as the previous paragraph might highlight, is the danger of the film becoming heavy handed or preachy, which it deftly avoids at every precarious thematic pitfall. By putting a human face on the major issues and voices, the political messages can live in service to the story and just far enough beneath the surface to never draw you from the narrative. There’s even a point in the third act where a character lists out horrifying facts and figures about illegal immigration in the U.S., but since his speech fits nicely in the storytelling, it honestly deserves to be there.

It’s also a film produced for a broad audience, without being broad itself. Rather, its specific content for each smaller niche is cleanly developed and executed in original ways. Most of the audience I saw it with were Hispanic, and as the film freely jumps between English and Spanish (choosing to add subtitles only sparingly), it was clear from the laughter that I missed 15% of the best jokes. For the wider American audience, it never serves as a guilt piece. The “legal” Americans, the rich, and the rest of Los Angeles, are never shown to be cartoonish in their lack of support or understanding, but there is a sting that exists in focusing on a hard-working, underpaid, struggling man striving for the American dream, which portrays a lead character archetype we’re so rarely exposed to… it’s quite frankly jarring. Even the trailers leading into the film all portrayed the worlds we’ve become accustomed to: feeling sorry for rich or middle class white men who struggle with the daily life of a cubicle job. Nothing gives that film a punch in the throat quite like watching a man risk death to trim the palm trees of a stock trader in Santa Monica.

Most impressively, when the film chooses comedy, it finds a very small central voice that appeals equally across demographics. When Carlos’ boss heads back to Mexico, he claims to be running his own farm and delivering packages. Carlos asks: “Who will you be delivering to? We’re all here.” A line that brought the house down in the theatre. We might all be laughing for different reasons, but it gets a diverse audience on the same page.

To maintain its realism, a lesser film would have made sacrifices for the sake of keeping its wider audience. Weitz deftly sidesteps this with a reasonable character device. The son, having grown up around Americans with American problems, has all but forgotten his culture, and even occasionally, his own language. As Luis discovers why he should take pride in his heritage, it allows Carlos to explain things an American audience wouldn’t understand without taking us too far into the realm of exposition. A clever (and very welcome) decision.

In the end, the film leaves you with the same feeling as described in Fight Club: “After fighting, everything else in life gets the volume turned down.” Walking out of that film, where you are reminded with every frame of celluloid, just how far a man will go to keep his feet planted in American soil, all your problems seem so childish and laughable, embarrassment seems unavoidable. It made me thankful for not only the blessings in life, and the ease with which I move from day to day, but even thankful for my biggest problems.

Knowing I can fight with my dad every day is vastly preferable to any other world.