As I left the Los Angeles Film Festival premiere of “A Better Life’ back in June I knew I had just experienced nothing short of a miracle in modern cinema. Few, if any, movies have kept me so enthralled, engaged and emotionally invested like this film did. I absolutely loved this movie.
The film directed by Chris Weitz (“About a Boy”) is an emotional, poignant tale about an illegal immigrant named Carlos (Demian Bichir) and his rebellious son Luis (Jose Jullian). Carlos does landscaping in Los Angeles. He wants nothing more than for his son to have, well, a better life and not engage in the gang relations his life is inching towards. It is Carlos and Luis against the world.
Carlos comes into possession of a truck to help his landscaping business and make his and Luis’ life easier. But when another illegal immigrant steals the truck, Luis and Carlos go on a quest through Los Angeles to find the truck and the man that stole it. But getting the truck back causes more problems for the small family and threatens to tear them apart forever.
“A Better Life” makes a political statement, but it is not a political film. In fact, with the exception of one quick scene of a rally, which the film could have done without, there’s nothing that makes the film look like a political drama. It puts a sympathetic human face to contrast ignorant mindset.
Instead of showing rallies at statehouses, the film goes microscopic and finds a human story about Hispanics and deportation. It’s easy and rather perfunctory to show a group of minorities standing outside city hall calling for their equality.
What Weitz does here is much harder and complex, and that‘s what makes the film so hypnotic. He goes subterranean and into the personalities of these characters and how they truly care and affect each other. There is something extremely personal and intimate about this movie that almost makes it feel and look like a polished guerilla-style documentary.
The characters are all brought to life perfectly. Bichir, a prominent actor in the Hispanic film industry, carries this movie as Carlos, the father. With his sad-looking face and hope-filled eyes, we root for him every step of the way. I predict an Oscar nomination for him.
His performance alone will hit chords with the lackluster fathers in the audience who are eager to take on the title of “Dad” but just as eager to sidestep the responsibilities that go along with it. Bichir’s performance will make those kind of people squirm in their seats as they see what a real father is.
Bichir’s expressive face is a great asset in dramatic material like this. We can tell he is hurt, yet hopeful just by looking in his eyes. It is easy to just recite what the script tells you to feel. But as a moviegoer, I am personally more moved by an actor’s ability to communicate his thoughts with unspoken body language and facial expressions.
Jose Julian is likeable as the angst-ridden son, Luis. He is a regular teenager. He notices the great things his father is doing for his family, but he has got bigger fish to fry, like beating up the other thug who talks trash to his shorty. You feel a sense of history between this father and son.
The rest of the supporting cast is great, too, including Chelsea Rendon as Luis’ love interest and Richard Cabral as her tattooed brother who is already in the involved in the gang life. I met Cabral after the movie, and it was jarring that such a polite, soft-spoken gentleman played such a thug.
The actors make us emotionally invested in the characters’ lives. The actors and director completely absorbed me from the very beginning and made it impossible for me to distance myself from the movie for even a second until it ended.
Some of the backlash I have heard the film receive is how it portrays Hispanic as stereotypes. Bichir’s character, for example, is an illegal gardener in Los Angeles. Most of the Hispanic students we see at Luis’ school are either in gang relations or eyeing that life as the only alternative lifestyle.
They are who they are, though. The characters are too fleshed out and three-dimensional to fit into the mold of a stereotype.
And besides, Hispanics don’t have to represent themselves in film any more than Caucasians have to represent themselves in film. They can be whoever they want to be. Luis wanted to be a soccer player and now he’s eyeing a life of crime. It’s not because he’s Hispanic. It’s because he’s Luis.