Movies On picket lines
By TED PARKS
Id like to know more about
Father Gregorio in Bread and Roses, the latest film by English
director Ken Loach, known for his cinema of social critique.
That we hear the priests name at a union rally but never see
him is a metaphor for one omission in this movie about the fight for workplace
dignity and a union by a group of largely Latino janitors in Los Angeles.
Religious leaders of varied stripe have had a significant role in the Los
Angeles labor movement. And some attention to the spirituality of Latino
workers might have injected more hope into a story of ongoing abuse and
struggle.
However, the film compellingly focuses on another significant
dimension of the immigrant experience, the family. Loach personalizes the
exploitation of immigrant labor by concentrating the action on one set of
workers and, among them, two sisters.
A fast-moving cinema vérité sequence opens the movie
with the chaotic journey of Mexican immigrant Maya (Pilar Padilla) across the
U.S. border. Mayas sister, Rosa, (Elpidia Carrillo), whose diabetic
husband is too sick to work, lives in Los Angeles. Though Rosa gets her newly
arrived relative a job in a Latino bar, a row with a sleazy pair of macho
clients confirms how demeaning the work is for Maya, who wanted to clean
buildings with her sister.
Despite the endless supply of workers waiting for an opening, Rosa
succeeds in getting Maya on with the cleaning service. Quickly befriended by
fellow worker Rubén (Alonso Chavez), Maya soon encounters union
organizer Sam (Adrien Brody), establishing a relational triangle that helps
motor the unfolding labor story.
The primary emotional power comes from the stormy relationship
between Rosa and Maya. Resistant to the union from the start, Rosa eventually
rats on the employees pushing to organize. Emotions peak when Maya, who has
become a leader in the campaign to organize, confronts her sister.
During the exchange, we learn that Rosa got Maya the job by
sleeping with the abusive company supervisor Pérez (George Lopez), a
bitter echo of an earlier time in Tijuana when prostitution was the only way
Rosa could keep her family fed. The standoff between sisters precedes the
climactic labor battle, which lands Sam, Maya and their fellow marchers in
jail.
While the union placards in the movie read Justice for
Janitors 2000, the film telescopes years of labor history. Organizer Sam
coaches his protesting workers with news clips from the 1990 Los Angeles
Justice for Janitors campaign, in which clashes with riot police landed
marchers in hospitals and jails. Sam links the California workers slogan
to the same theme that inspired a Massachusetts labor fight back in 1912.
We want bread, but we want roses, too, Sam tells the workers.
You know when you get roses? When you stop begging, and you
organize.
Bread and Roses is Loachs first film set in
America. His foray into injustice in America seamlessly fuses Spanish and
English, faithful to the linguistic give-and-take of many California
workplaces. Refusing to commit to English-only with Spanish subtitles or
Spanish-only with English, the dialogue oscillates, the onscreen translations
flip-flopping between the two languages as fast as the characters
speech.
The dialogue lurches at times toward harangue. Rosas
anti-union rhetoric sounds too rehearsed to be as spontaneous as were
made to think. And a series of threats by supervisor Pérez, each
symmetrically prefaced with Join a union (Join a union.
Theyll take 20 percent of your check) perhaps overplays his
union-busting boss-talk.
But the few near misses dont derail the films
believable portrayal of immigrant life and labor exploitation. The cast is
drawn from life. Reminiscent of the Italian neo-realists, Loach combines
nonprofessionals with experienced actors. Among the largely Latino cast, Pilar
Padilla didnt know English when casting started. She played Maya,
convincing in both languages, after two months intensive English study in
San Francisco.
The film is full of the real world icons of the labor struggle,
from the bright red Justice for Janitors T-shirts of the Service
Employees International Union Local 1877, to the black-helmeted storm
trooper-like Los Angeles riot cops.
Loachs visual approach blends in-your-face documentary with
more symbolically complex images. Toward the films conclusion, for
instance, a close-quarters handheld camera captures marchers storming the lobby
of the high-rise they clean. But on the way to the building, Loach relies on
the compressed visual perspective of a long lens to emphasize the tightly
bonded collective now making its way to the showdown.
And the fractured relationship and the unfinished reconciliation
between Maya and Rosa reminds us of a social and economic system that not only
exacts deep individual pain, but itself begs redemption.
Ted Parks writes from Malibu, Calif.
National Catholic Reporter, June 1,
2001
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