Bread and Roses

Elpidia Carrillo has a scene in this film equal to the "...I'm the best possible Arnold Burns" self-justification speech in A THOUSAND CLOWNS. It's so real and raw it's almost hard to watch. I saw this film at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, and it so beautifully delivers the drama and the realities of the Justice for Janitors campaign. Ken Loach does it again...with an American accent (ALL the Americas). Adrien Brody is Ron Leibman's NORMA RAE organizer if he were younger and less seasoned, but just as much the true believer. Pilar Padilla's Maya is all passion and youth and fun-loving troublemaker. The documentary style that Ken Loach uses is perfect for the subject.

As Sam Shapiro, a labor activist who helps Hispanic janitors in an L.A. office building to form a union, Brody's blend of earnestness and mischief really livens up this well-meaning, sometimes moving, occasionally didactic Ken Loach film. Brody's beard and bedhead make him look especially cuddly; no wonder engaging heroine Pilar Padilla eventually drags him into a closet for some hot and heavy nookie! :-) (My husband also remarked that all that hair made Brody's prominent proboscis look, well, less prominent -- not that Brody's noble nose ever bothered me, thank you very much! :-).

In this movie, there are no purloined designer clothes to masquerade in, and Prince Charming doesn't come complete with a political career and a three-piece suit--he's a scruffy charmer in a baggy t-shirt with little more to offer than a megaphone and a cause.

This is a film made by a director who has to be spiritual kin to Michael Moore, but his subject matter is quite different. Here we see real immigrants (both legal and illegal) being used rather cynically by companies whose business plan includes hiring the most downtrodden and fearful and hand-to-mouth in our country, paying them the lowest possible wages, giving them absolutely no benefits whatsoever, and thereby winning contracts to provide custodial and other services over companies that pay a fair and living wage, plus benefits, to primarily unionized employees who are American citizens. You know this really happens. It does. The best remedy for the situation is certainly a matter for debate, but no matter what your political slant or position on labor unions and illegal immigrants, you will most definitely find food for thought herein.

OTOH, if you are also one of the drooling legions of newbie Adrien Brody fangirls, you will find even more food for thought. Brody is painfully cute in this movie-a piquant mixuture of earnest, funny, sincere, sweet, and fiery, topped off with a kinghell case of `bedhead'.

The three central players are Pilar Padilla, as idealistic illegal immigrant Maya, her overburdened sister Rosa, played by Elipidia Carillo, and Brody as Sam Shapiro, an organizer and activist for the cause. No fairy tale, this movie, though a few of the cast are reasonably good-looking. The cast, many of whom really are janitors and custodians, are as real as it gets. You can see a lifetime of hard labor and long hours in their faces, and the slump to their shoulders.

I really grew to like these struggling janitors and maids. None of them were "types"--they were all real people and their conflicts and concerns were illuminated very well, despite limited screen time being available to each. By treating these characters with respect and making them fully-fleshed out, it made the passion of the organizers for this particular cause more understandable, and not just as sometimes seems the case in some portrayals, a matter of someone who is bored or spoiled or has some sort of guilt-complex trying to find their identity and using do-gooderism as a means to that end. Through coming out from the shadows, and joining the great and messy American experience of organized dissent, you could practically see some of these characters changing into `Americans' before your eyes, no matter what their official papers might say. Thinking like Americans, standing up for their rights, making their voices heard. That's how it's supposed to work-isn't it? Isn't it?

If there are caricatures in this movie, then those would be some of the building administrators, but their screen time is so limited, and they are usually so surprised and besieged by Sam Shapiro's stunts and protests that their lack of articulate or sympathetic response seems realistic enough to me. But the one thing that stands out is more than anything else is the absolutely natural acting style. Nobody really seems to be "acting" in this movie. It's as if there was a very unobtrusive documentary maker following these folks around. The movie is, however, well-paced between scenes which are rousing or charming, and those which are raw and painful.

Although this movie is not a love story or romance, per se, Adrien's character does get some action in it. In fact, in one amusing scene, he is literally hauled into a janitor's closet by an enterprising female (smart girl!!) and snogged silly. One can but applaud that sort of enterprise and initiative on the part of a recent arrival to this great country of ours. That's the kind of can-do immigrant spirit that made this country great, and if I were there, I would be sure to tell her how much I admired that quality in her, when I visited her in the hospital to apologize for having accidentally whacked her out of the way with a long-handled mop.

But it can't all be funny and cute, and indeed, in this same section of the movie is a scene of such raw emotion, harsh language, honesty, and truth, between the two Mexican sisters that I cannot say I have ever seen anything like it. Even Ebert said in his review that it's the kind of scene that would win an Oscar if the Academy ever saw movies like this, which of course, they don't.

The ending is both feel-good triumphant, and bittersweet. I think that such an ending was very much in keeping with the tone and overall realism of this movie--yes, some things changed for the better, but for people like these, not everyone gets that happy ending and lives happily ever after. At least, not right away.

There's real passion here, on the part of everyone involved, and it feels genuine, not manipulative. It's a pleasure to see a movie with good quality production values and excellent acting which was made for a reason, not just to make money.

Same typical themes handled in Loach's work. I felt something strange, while watching it, maybe the San Diegan locations might be strange to the fans used to seeing English and Scottish cities. Nevertheless I couldn't say the effort of observation and insight doesn't work; the young Mexican gal propelled by the American dream is very believable, the unknown cast acts with passion, expressing the various faces of injustice and biases migrants must endure. However, my final opinion on the movie is that it fails to illustrate the real situations these kind of people live in and their genuine feelings, that is the Ken Loach's peculiarity.

"Bread and Roses" is an engaging film about immigrant workers' struggles against poverty, state violence, and economic exploitation. I saw "Bread and Roses" at the Denver Film Festival thinking it was going to be a dry, lecturing documentary. Instead, it was a nuanced and complex dramatic depiction of powerful and engaging characters. It is rare to find such a politically charged film that is made so effective by presenting very human characters struggling with the contradictions of everyday life. It allows us to appreciate the tough choices we all make in conditions not of our own choosing--it allows us to explore issues outside of the knee-jerk judgments of good guy/bad guy and appreciate the very human responses to often inhuman circumstances we all participate in creating. The acting is generally very good, especially for a "low budget" production, but the main character's older sister delivers a monologue on her struggles with deprivation that still chills me to the bone even though I saw it months ago. Sorry for leaving out the details, but this is one film whose details you'll want to discover for yourself.