El Norte
If you thought Illegal immigration is a new
thing, then you are mistaken. “El Norte” tells us this issue was pretty much
the same 41 years ago as it is today. Only the magnitude can be discussed.
Rosa (Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez) and Enrique (David
Villalpando) are siblings in Guatemala. Because their father is trying to set
up some sort of protest against abuse from, presumably, the landowners, he is
shot and their mother is taken away, presumably killed. The siblings only survive
by hiding. Seeing they cannot stay they decide to go to “El Norte”, to the
promised land in the North where everybody have flush toilets and a car.
They manage to get through Mexico easily
enough, but in Tijuana on the US border they run into trouble. The first agent
they find to help them across the border tries to mug them and then they are
picked up by immigration and sent back. The second attempt fares better but
costs them their only valuables and involves a long crawl through a rat
infested sewer. Something that eventually proves fatal.
In the US things are not as great as they
could have hoped. There are people who are willing to hire illegal migrants,
but the pay is very low and the risks are high. There is the constant threat from
the “Migra” (Migration authorities) and without papers there is no health or
any other official protection. All of which are issues Rosa and Enrique run
into and which lead to a downbeat conclusion.
The striking thing about this movie is, as
mentioned above, how timeless this story is. Change the cars and haircuts and
this movie could have been made today. In this movie the migrants are fleeing
Guatemala, but it could be from anywhere in the Global South. There is a strong
motivator to move in the physical prosecution Rosa and Enrique are subjected
to, but there is also an obvious economic lure, which plays a large part in the
movie. The US is the place these people dream of whenever things are hard. This
story could also just as well have played out in Europe. Then the crawl through
the sewer would have been replaced by a dinghy across the Mediterranean.
The political point the movie is trying to
make is to see illegal migration from the point of the migrant and present the
risks, indignities and desperate hopes of these. What of course is not covered
here is the other side of the coin, why this kind of immigration is illegal. I
think there are some pretty good arguments why governments want to control
immigration, but from the point of view of the migrant, all those points are
completely irrelevant. The consequence is that they end up in a lawless limbo.
From a production value point of view, I
had some misgivings going in as this promised to be a second-rate production,
but that is not the case at all. Production value is pretty high and the
acting, especially from Gutierrez and Villalpando, is convincing. They strike
the right level of naive determination, and we instantly sympathize with them.
Both went on to have long careers in movies and TV.
There is a level of melodrama here, it
cannot be otherwise or there would be nothing to drive the movie forward, but what
stroke me most watching it, was the looming threat of disaster just over the
horizon. Every step of the way, from Guatemala and to the end in Los Angeles I
get the sense that Rosa and Enrique are walking on a precipice and often they
are not even aware of the danger they are facing, blinded as they are of their
hopes and needs. It actually made it difficult for me to watch as I constantly counted
all the may ways this could end badly and, in a sense, I was not disappointed.
I am not certain I would want to watch “El
Norte” again, this is not a feel-good movie, but I guess it classifies as an
important movie that tells a story people need to hear.
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