Guatemala. Rosa and her brother Enrique are Maya Indians living in a small village. Exhausted by the conditions on the coffee plantation, their father wants to join a socialist movement and start a worker’s union, and is thus killed by the government forces in an ambush, who hang his decapitated head on a tree. Enrique and Rosa flee north, aiming to reach the US, inspired by flattering rumors of the country told to them by their grandma. On the Mexican border, they are betrayed by a border smuggler who wanted to rob them until realizing they only have 20$. Another smuggler helps them cross through a sevage pipe to Los Angeles. Enrique finds a job in a restaurant and Rosa as a housemaid. Rosa gets sick from a typhus caused by rats and dies, and Enrique misses his flight to Chicago to be with her in the hospital. He remains scouting for hard labor jobs.
Immigrants drama “El Norte”, included in Roger Ebert’s Great Movies list, is a bitter commentary on how the luxury of the upper class is sustained by the poor workers of the lower class, summed up in the fates of brother and sister Enrique and Rosa. The story is remarkably simple, almost banal, and in some other author’s hands it could have been a soap opera, yet here, thanks to the director Gregory Nava, it somehow feels genuine, authentic, and inspires compassion: if you watch just 10 minutes of the film, you are hooked and want to see it to the end. Besides a chronicle of the journey and accommodation of the migrants, it also indirectly briefly touches upon the rarely talked about topic of the Mayan genocide, at least in the opening act, when the Maya people were persecuted in the Guatemalan Civil War as an extended collective punishment for the allegations of Communist collaboration of some of their members.
While this summary may initially sound suspicious, since the film tackles the typical “social issue” themes and carries a “messages” about injustice, it is never manipulative, predictable, nor does it aim to be “award bait”. “El norte” is a fascinating ‘raw’ drama that is honest, yet is even more fascinating during some moments of magical realism that blends in nature elements: the sequence where Rosa enters her empty home, walks around and only finds butterflies flying in the room; Rosa sitting on the meadow, a goat stops and looks at her; Rosa having a dream of her dead father appearing in the garden, with two white peacocks lying next to her. At times, the movie has a knack for depicting Americans in the supporting roles: in one funny moment of the waiters arguing, Len says: "Why don't you shit your bed and roll over?", yet Bruce gives a surprisingly gentlemen-style response: "Len, my ears are not garbage cans!". "El Norte" has no stance on all of these events, it is just an unbiased depiction of the archetype story of people on the bottom trying to achieve a better life, but they are stuck in a "suspended life", or better said a "suspended happiness", as their idealistic goal is always shifted further and further away beyond their reach.
Grade:+++
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