Growing up, did you ever hear “why do you think I”m doing this? I’m doing this for YOU!” from your parents? In my old neighborhood that was bandied about almost daily. But kids never listen, never take it to heart. But with A Better Life, what parents do for their kids is laid out right in front of you. A Better Life is a beautifully made film that is a love story between a father and his son, and shows the lengths a father will go to in order to give his child the best he’s able to give.
Luis Galindo is a kid in East L.A. Luis and his friends speak in broken Spanglish, slowly losing the fluency with their parent’s language by their own need to carve out a niche for themselves. Luis is in love with Ruthie, whose uncles are hard-core Latino gang members. There’s a push-pull inside Luis; soccer and school, or the girl, the gang and a possible early grave. Meanwhile Luis’ father has to decide whether to take a step to better himself by buying his friend’s gardening truck and the client list that goes along with it, or go back to day-by-day laborer work now that his friend is moving back to Mexico. As each one makes his own choices, the father and son are drawn together in ways they never imagined.
A Better Life has a gritty, realistic feel to it that draws viewers in. Lightly glossing over the rough stuff, or making characters cliches wouldn’t work in this father-son tale, and to quote Chis Weitz in his letter to Landmark Theaters, “[t]he script passed through the B.S. meters of the kids at Legacy LA, a wonderful afterschool program in East Los Angeles, and the people at Homeboy Industries.” (Now that’s an organization that I’d love to see here in Baltimore….) The cinematography is just as on-the-mark, with lush greens of upper class gardens a stark contrast to the dusty, bleached out colors of Carlos and Luis’ home, and the disheartening greys of Luis’ school. It’s no wonder father and son both yearn for a better life; it’s just so damn beautiful.
Talented newcomer José Julián plays the American born Luis Galindo with all the dreams and wants of the typical post-MTV Cribs teen. Mexican film and telenovela star (and major hottie) Demián Bichir plays Carlos, Luis’ father who tries his best to make it to The American Dream while keeping his head down (due to his immigration status) and his nose to the grindstone. There seems to be a real connection between the two actors, and the father/son pairing is completely believable. Bichir draws you into Carlos’ world, one where graffiti like “Too many Mexicans, not enough bullets” isn’t just disgusting, it’s personally painful. A world where if something bad happens to you, you can’t go to the police because you’ll only be sent “home”…a place long forgotten in the hope that the USA would consider you one of it’s own.
Did I go off on a tangent? Sorry, but it’s tough not to consider how it must feel to be an illegal immigrant here while watching this film. But director Chris Weitz (About A Boy) didn’t make a diatribe about our current system, but instead plays out the very real choices people have to live with every day. It’s up to viewers to draw any conclusions, if they so choose. Because A Better Life is not about politics, it’s about the connection between a father and son, and how these two characters are better people for the love of the other. It’s a touching story that doesn’t pull any punches or make life easy for the sake of storytelling.
