WHO IS DAYANI CRISTAL? Review By Greg Klymkiw - Highly acclaimed by the Film Corner

America is so precious about its border
it kills thousands of people per year.
These are dirt-poor migrant workers.
They'll do work American WhiteTrash
won't do, yet they're murdered.
WHY?

WHO IS DAYANI CRISTAL? - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Klymkiw HOT DOCS 2013 HOT PICK

Who is Dayani Cristal? (2013) ****
Dir. Mark Silver
Starring and Produced By: Gael Garcia Bernal

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I really don't get why America has always been so precious about its border with Mexico. Purportedly, the big reason is to make sure that "furriners" don't steal jobs from good, hardworking Americans. This, of course, is a big joke. No matter how poor they are, the vast majority of unemployed America's potential work force refuse to do the jobs illegal migrant workers south of Mexico's border are willing to do. In fact, a big part of America's economy would be deeper in the crapper than it already is without the underground workforce. Those who refuse to admit it are either lying or ignorant.

And yet, year after year, decade upon decade, America has waged war against virtually incalculable numbers of people who try to cross their borders - not to steal, not to make trouble, not to be a drain on the system - but to work. America is good at waging war. It's what keeps the rich getting richer and the poor to get poorer. It's how the rich dumb down its population. Even worse, it's how the rich cull the population while at the same time exploiting other countries for financial gain. Perhaps America's power brokers are hoping that the dwindling middle class in America will get so desperate that they'll be the ones to take all the jobs Americans (at least for now) refuse to take.

Whatever the reasons - and you can bet the official reasons are spurious as all get out - thousands upon thousands of "illegals" are captured, incarcerated and deported with untold millions of dollars spent on enforcing this perverse form of protectionism which is both racist and ultimately, ineffective. They keep coming. They're poor, they have no work and America has plenty for them to do.

An alarming number of these "illegals" die. Some are robbed and beaten to death. Most drop dead of thirst and hunger in the vast desert wilderness between the Mexican border and civilization.

Who is Dayani Cristal? is about the dead and I have to admit, this is conceivably one of the saddest and most infuriating films I've ever seen. (Curiously, one other cinematic wrist-slasher, Liz Marshall's The Ghosts in Our Machine, also appears at this year's Hot Docs Film Festival).

Working with fine writing by Mark Monroe, filmmaker Mark Silver's stunning, harrowing and genuinely great film is a superbly directed feature documentary that gives us a tale of one such "illegal" found rotting in the blazing sun of the deadly Sonora Desert in Friendly Arizona - a state where many of the (mostly unemployed) American White Trash are the first to complain about migrant workers stealing jobs that they themselves wouldn't even begin to think of taking.

The dead man has no I.D. He is a "John Doe". His body will remain on ice until a dogged American forensic team exhausts every possible avenue to match a name with the body based upon any clues they can find. The doctor and his team who do this work display the sort of compassion that makes one, thankfully, realize just how wonderful the American people are and can be - that many are sick and tired of the horrendous totalitarian policies of the rich - and that if there was eventually some way to break the horrendous attempts to dumb-down most of the country's population that maybe, just maybe, there will be a possibility of returning the country to the principles of the founding fathers.

Until then, "illegals" are treated worse than cattle sent to the slaughterhouse.

The film follows two roads. One involves the attempts to identify the man's body - he has one arcane clue - a tattoo that reads "Dayani Cristal". If the teams can - somehow - find out who or what "Dayani Cristal" is, then they might be that much closer to putting a name to the body and returning it to his family.

The other path involves star and Producer, the dreamy heartthrob Gael Garcia Bernal who takes to the open road - travelling with other migrants from Honduras through Guatemala, Mexico and Arizons - hitting the likeliest route, places and activities the dead man would have. These sequences are a brilliant hybrid of drama and documentary that seem less "recreation" or "dramatization", but a genuine journey. The sequences include some of the most hair-raising sequences on moving boxcars I've ever seen, and unless I'm blind, it does not appear as Bernal is using a stunt double.

Though we feel we know what the answer to the mystery will be, it is impossible to be less than enthralled with both the journeys taken by the forensic team and Bernal. It's the roads taken by both that supply us with the reality that faces destitute foreign migrant workers every single day.

And though it IS a film that makes us sad and infuriated, we're strangely elated by the touches of humanity along the way.

The work of politicians and their bureaucratic minions on behalf of the rich are faceless, but it's the faces and spirit of those who struggle on that ultimately move us. That said, there is a sense that the real free and brave of America are those without freedom and whose only real wealth is their bravery.

This is highly polished filmmaking at every level, but it's also indicative of what is still important and truthful about great cinema. And, for that matter, America.

"Who is Dayani Cristal?" is playing at the 2013 Hot Docs Film Festival. For showtimes and ticket information, please visit the festival website HERE.

¡ALAMBRISTA! - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Veteran independent filmmaker Robert M Young has crafted the most detailed, realistic and heart-achingly poignant portrait of "illegal" Mexican migrant workers ever made - fully restored and replete with a bevy of fine additional material on the new Criterion Collection Blu-Ray.

¡Alambrista! (1977) dir. Robert M. Young

Starring: Domingo Ambriz, Linda Gillin, Jerry Hardin, Ned Beatty, Edward James Olmos, Julius Harris

****

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The American Dream is never what it's cracked up to be - at least not for most, and especially not for migrant workers who enter the country illegally from Mexico. Often, a young man with a wife and children, living in the squalor of America's neighbour to the South, wants nothing more than to make a better life for his family.

He looks to America where the slave wages paid to "illegals" for back-breaking work is a fortune compared to what can normally be earned in Mexico. Many of these men sneak into the Home of the Brave and Land of the Free with the plan to stay for no longer than a year to make enough money to provide for their loved ones.

For any number of reasons, many of these men never return home.

Robert M. Young has been one of the most important and prolific American filmmakers over the past six decades. During his early career he delivered a myriad of important works ranging from hard-hitting television exposes, socially conscious cinéma vérité documentaries, unique corporate-sponsored works and several National Geographic pieces during their heyday when the movies they generated were actually good, if not great.

¡Alambrista! was Young's first feature drama and it remains untouched as the most detailed, realistic and heart-achingly poignant portrait of "illegal" Mexican migrant workers ever made. Some have mistakenly ascribed the classification of neorealism to his films, though in reality he's a member of a very exclusive club with few members.

Granted, one can identify elements of neorealism in Young's work, but unlike the Italian neo-realists who borrowed documentary techniques and applied them to classical storytelling, Young uses documentary to tell "fictional" stories. He does so in a way that strips forced emotion from the work, utilizing journalistic objectivity to an amalgam of scripted material and improvisation.

In so doing, Young's much closer to the pioneering Lionel Rogosin (On The Bowery) and creates work that not only reflects life, but creates life within the frame of the camera.

Some have suggested that Young's approach is to avoid the techniques of mainstream filmmaking - most notably the avoidance of manipulation. This is nonsense, of course. All great filmmakers are manipulators, but what makes Young stand out is how he chooses to manipulate.

Young hangs back from the action enough so that we see the lives of the characters unfold as naturalistically and realistically as possible. This is a choice Young makes. He uses the technique of presenting the action unfettered by overt flourishes. It's a great choice for the material and renders any numbers of scenes and sequences with all the power, drama and conflict one expects from a good movie.

Presenting the action of the story this way results in several great set-pieces that hold their own with films that have chosen more overt uses of cinematic storytelling. One sequence involves a couple of drunks (the great character actor and star of numerous blaxploitation classics Julius Harris and an almost unrecognizable and utterly electric Edward James Olmos). Harris and Olmos spew their rage, venom and sadness at a group of migrant workers lined up to present their physical attributes to foremen driving by in trucks to survey what "meat" will provide the best back-breaking bang for the buck.

It's a great scene - one of many in the film. This one, in particular is so unbearably painful, it's hard to watch. Young, using a handheld camera, infuses immediacy into the proceedings by presenting a moment where characters look upon what they themselves have the potential to become.

Why it works so beautifully is how Young manipulates the action in an objective fashion, but at the same time, makes the conscious effort to place professional actors in roles of men who represent a futuristic mirror image for the real migrant workers, all of whom are non-actors.

Harris and Olmos are as real as the real guys, but their thespian flourishes are a perfect juxtaposition between those who are mere virgins to exploitation and those who are veterans of exploitation.

It's so simple and so true, just like the whole movie.

Blending mostly real migrant workers (non-actors) with seasoned professional actors, Young presents the simple, but powerful tale of Roberto (Ambriz), a young man who enters America illegally to make as much money as possible for his wife, children and mother. Roberto's Mom begs him not to go, reminding him that his own father disappeared and never returned. He's confident, however, that he'll be able to generate a good whack of dough and promises to return in a year at most.

His journey begins with a harrowing crossing of the border, an arduous journey to a city where he can find work and finally, settling in with relative comfort - working a number of jobs; most of them back-breaking, but some relatively pleasant. He meets a whole new group of fellow countrymen and most prove to be friendly and loyal. He's even taken in by Sharon (Gillen) a pretty single Mom who works as a waitress. She takes pity on him and admires his gentle nature and the result is that he now actually has a clean roof above his head.

He also experiences every migrant worker's biggest nightmare and winds up captured by immigration officials who deport him back to Mexico. Refusing to give up on the American Dream, Roberto agrees to join a sleazy recruiter who transports men to America for "free" in exchange for working off the huge "fee" charged for this "service".

Roberto's time in America is not without positive aspects, but he eventually begins to see the realities of what life is really going to be like if he keeps up the empty pursuit of what America purports to offer. When he makes a shocking and even sordid discovery, it's as if he's looking into a mirror that predicts his future.

For Roberto to survive with any semblance of humanity, he must find a way to escape the fate of shattered dreams, dehumanization and a final resting place in a potter's field - to entangle himself from the web of deceit called the American Dream.

"¡Alambrista!" is available on a stunning Bluray transfer from the Criterion Collection and replete with a director's commentary, a powerful and eye-opening interview with Edward James Olmos and finally, the best extra feature of all, Young's stunning 1973 short documentary on migrant workers in America which is entitled "Children of the Fields".