lunedì 4 febbraio 2019

Alambrista! - Robert M. Young

anche nel 1977 si andava dal Massico agli Usa per cercare lavoro.
il film racconta la storia di Roberto, che lascia moglie e figlia per un po' di soldi.
Roberto è uno che vuole solo lavorare per loa famiglia, trova un mondo di disperazione, di inganni e di tentazioni, e tanti come lui.
quasi un documentario, a volte, un film da non perdere - Ismaele





Roberto Ramirez (Domingo Ambriz) is a young married field hand in a rural area of Michoacán, Mexico, whose wife just gave birth to a daughter. Afraid he can't support his family, Roberto goes north, crossing the border to California, where the non-English-speaking illegal hopes to make enough money in a year to return to support his family. Of note, his mom reminds him that his father went north and mysteriously never returned. After eluding an immigration police raid while he works at picking fruit, Roberto hooks up with Mexican colleagues to survive and lives in a chicken coop. Joe (Trinidad Silva) acts as the innocent Roberto's mentor and teaches him how to smile for the gringos and order coffee, ham and eggs for breakfast. 
The illegal Roberto and Joe become sidekicks and ride a freight to Stockton, but get separated. When the exhausted fruit picker with no place to live, Roberto, falls asleep in the luncheonette, near Stockton, the sweet waitress gringo single-mom Sharon (Linda Gillen) feels sorry for him and takes him home. They become lovers and Sharon teaches him English, how to send a money order home, and takes the fish-out-of-water to an evangelist Sundayrevival meeting and, he goes for the first time, to a department store. But just as quickly as they met, they depart when he's troubled by the immigration police and has become homesick. The two will not even have a chance to say goodbye to each other, as they separate for good…

…Young does a fairly good job in exploring Roberto’s plight with sensitivity and honest insight.  His struggles are sympathetic, and Abriz’s performance is fine.  Not great, but fine.  At times Roberto seems to be a bit of a blank slate, and we don’t understand what motivates him to do certain things.  The film also seems to be marking off a certain checklist of scenarios it needs to cover, although perhaps you could level the same complaint at El Norte.
The film has a documentary-ish style that gives it a neorealist edge.  This is undercut by some of the scoring choices, however.  It opens with an absolutely lovely melody on acoustic guitar, but in other places the music is pretty goofy and jarring…

The story soon becomes one of survival, as he endures and escapes one random set of dire circumstances after another without feeling contrived or stopping for cheap sentimental tricks. Roberto even makes a certain selfish choice, but at the time, after what he’s been through, who could blame him?
Roberto speaks no English and there are big stretches of the movie where he doesn’t speak at all. This causes us to further identify with him and it makes the moments of chaos and confusion come alive. ¡Alambrista! is an intimate film, mixing in non-actors in actors in situations that rarely feel scripted…

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