Immigration-themed weeper is deported from greatness.
The proponents of globalization hail our new borderless “flatâ€? world. Goods, capital, the guilt for carbon emissions and American debtâ€"all of these things can be transferred and distributed around the globe as fast as technology allows. It’s really quite nifty.***image1***
In this age of unbounded freedom, there is one type of flow for which human beings have enacted filters, both legal and physical, to stop: the movement of other human beings. Specifically, human beings from the global south who wish to come to the global north. Which begs the questions: Isn’t it precisely
because
of borders that globalization works the way that it does?
If the “playing field� was actually level, for people as well as capital, would people continue to work for pennies an hour and make the massive, cheap consumerism of the wealthy countries possible? No. And this is precisely why technology has set capital free, while putting motion sensors on European and American borders.
Still, people come. And the stories of the people who make those voyages, at great cost and even greater peril, are little understood by those whose idea of travel begins with a call to their travel agent. These stories need to be told. The empathy that could come with their telling is desperately needed. Is it relevant then, to judge the artistic merits of a work of art that does just that? It is.
For with great topics comes great responsibility. Think of the Iraq-themed Hollywood films of 2007. The filmmakers were earnest in their intentions, but their films were universally mediocre, or worse. Few went to see them and those who did go, since the films were critically panned, went for ideological confirmation and therefore learned nothing. There now exists what might be called “Iraq film fatigue.â€? What studio would chance one again? What skeptical audience? Those middling films may have actually done more harm to their cause than good. A filmâ€"or any other work of artâ€"must ultimately stand on the effect it has on its audience.
The new immigration-themed film,
Under the Same Moon
(
La Misma Luna
), directed by Patricia Riggen, is just such a film: Its topic is massively important, but its artistic result is unexceptional.
The story revolves around Enrique, an insanely cute 9-year-old boy who lives in Mexico with his grandmother. Enrique is played by the skillful young actor Eugenio Derbez who, with a fat little face that wrinkles up like a shar-pei when he cries, creates a character whose charismatic adorableness matches that of Toto from
Cinema Paradiso
. At the film’s opening, Enrique’s beautiful ***image2***young mother, Rosario (Kate del Castillo), has been living in Los Angeles for four years, working as a maid. Mother and son yearn for each other. When Enrique’s
abuela
dies, he sets out on a solo journey to reunite with his mother, avoiding
la migra
but finding adventure along the way.
His quest takes him from a secret compartment hidden in the SUV of a pair of
pochismo
-spewing
pochos
, and into the care of a fellow illegal immigrant with whom Enrique develops a pseudo-paternal bond. Enrique picks tomatoes and washes dishes to finance his travels and even catches a ride with the touring
corridos
band, Los Tigres Del Norte, which cheers him up with an immigration-themed song.
If this is all sounding charming, it’s because it is. But
Under the Same Moon
’s charm is severely stunted by its oversupply of clichés, plot contrivances and sentimental, saccharine lines. One can practically hear Fivel from
American Tale
singing when Enrique, luminous below a ridiculously oversized moon, waxes poetic about being under the same moon as his mother.
Under the Same Moon
is a decent picture. But even if we all wish on the same celestial body, nothing will make it great.
