Klymkiw watches TV (HBO CANADA) - It's nice when rich people produce films about poverty. Kudos to Maria Shriver for this one. PAYCHECK TO PAYCHECK: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF KATRINA GILBERT - Review By Greg Klymkiw

Paycheck To Paycheck: The Life and Times Of Katrina Gilbert (2014) ***
Dir. Nick Doob, Shari Cookson, Prod. Maria Shriver, Starring: Katrina Gilbert

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I can't help it, but trying to remove the taste of bile in my mouth is near-impossible when super-rich White People manage to weasel their way into arts and culture, based primarily upon their wealth, blue-blood family pedigree, celebrity and all the luxuries afforded to them and then make films about poor people. Such is the case of this latest production by Maria Shriver, daughter of Eunice Kennedy Shriver (hence, JFK's niece) and ex-wife of the nanny-defiling movie-star-body-builder-former-California-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Still, I'm happy enough to assess the 75 minute feature film Paycheck To Paycheck: The Life and Times Of Katrina Gilbert on its own terms since co-director Nick Doob has the distinction of being a real filmmaker and a longtime member of the unimpeachable Pennebaker Hegedus Films team, whilst his directorial partner Cookson, has a prolific c.v. which, includes the popular, though somewhat spurious doc series "Real Sex" (with its audience grabbing emphasis upon soft-hard-core antics and personalities).

Doob and Cookson had a whole year to dip into Shriver's access to O.P.M. (said access also generously applied, in fairness, to her many charitable activities) and follow around a Chattanooga, Tennessee nursing assistant to examine the life of the working poor - most specifically an example of America's most vulnerable and largest targets of poverty, single mothers.

Katrina Gilbert has three children and toils for 9 bucks an hour in an extended care facility. It's back-breaking, flat-footing work, but Gilbert genuinely seems to enjoy the daily human contact she has with the old and infirm. Still, she'd prefer to "better herself" and continue her post-secondary studies in the health care field, but in spite of her meagre salary and needing to support three kids, she is turned down - shockingly and inexplicably - for financial aid to further her education and perhaps get a better paying job.

Welcome to America.

Gilbert also has on-going medical conditions which, could well eventually morph into something life-threatening, yet when she goes to get an overdue check-up, she's hit with a doctor bill for over $300 as opposed to the $120 she was initially quoted. In America, there is no socialized medicine - it's big business in the Land of the Free and most people, including the working poor, have to cough up. (Obama Care doesn't appear to be in full implementation during the shooting, but even if it were, it's such a mess I can't imagine it would really help her.) Even more horrifying is that the list of medications she requires to keep her health on the up-and-up are so ludicrously expensive, she needs to make the decision of what drugs she can afford during a last-minute tabulation at the pharmacy.

Welcome to America.

She has three kids to feed, but since her ex is unemployed and often in arrears with his childcare payments, she not only has to lend him gas money to visit the kids, but her ration of food stamps to actually feed her progeny is shockingly and inexplicably cut-off.

Welcome to America.

The film itself is pretty compelling stuff and as a subject, Gilbert is pleasing, kind-hearted and smart. That being said, the movie presents her story in a what-you-see-is-what-you-get style, but I did find a few editing choices somewhat dubious - perhaps even downright unfair to her struggle.

For example, after discovering she doesn't qualify for educational assistance AND forced to choose what drugs she can actually afford, the filmmakers follow her into a beauty parlour so she can "do a little something" for herself. When she drops a healthy whack of dough for her new hair-do, I began to wonder, uh, lady - you have no money for drugs, yet you're dumping 70 or so smackers on what looks to be a (not-especially) flattering makeover. Given how much we feel for this woman, I felt this artistic choice - no matter how "true" - was simply cruel (intentional or not). Maybe it's the filmmakers' desire to make viewers have a similar response to the salon scene and intentionally plant a seed that grows into guilt for even having such a thought.

Whatever the reason it somehow feels out of place, just as a breakfast scene in the family's squalid home is shot and included wherein we watch the kids scarf down grease-laden plates of bacon and eggs, then guzzle-back bottles of pop. Yeah, we know that nutrition-choices are, for the poor, dictated by their poverty, but by continually including such sequences, one occasionally suspects there's a deeper agenda at play here - even if there isn't.

The choice to do this kind of thing might be true to the filmmakers's adherence to a direct cinema approach, but it's almost to the detriment of the film's forward trajectory since you, as a viewer, almost waste more time thinking about the rather mean-spirited approaches than what really counts. I suspect mean-spiritedness was not the intent and that the adherence to a direct cinema approach was paramount. However, even within that context, these moments stick out like sore thumbs rather than integrating with the whole. Greater attention needed to be paid to the desire to present an unfettered reality that should have addressed these important and clearly dichotomous moments in this woman and her family's life.

For example, the movie occasionally interviews individuals on the sidelines of the activities captured - in one case, a man who works as a clerk in a money-lending firm and in another, a clerk in a tax preparation office. In both instances, these brief side trips address the issues at hand - a woman who can't get credit anywhere else other than a usurious money lending service is acknowledged and treated like a human being who knows how hard she's trying to manage her debt and another who seems to even sense the absurdity of poor people needing to pay for a third party to report an income that, for all intents and purposes, is at the poverty line.

Where then is an individual to advocate for the "poor" or even simply acknowledge how easy it is to choose ephemeral pleasure over medical well-being and how prevalent it is in the lower financial strata of society? Where is the same perspective in terms of the grotesquely unhealthy breakfast the family is eating?

I think it's important we see these elements of Katrina's life - especially since it's presented as an individual sampling of the kind of thing millions of Americans are living through. I hate to make generalizations, but I think there's some truth to this one. Poor people see the world through the eyes of hardship and life experience. Some even acquire a modicum of wealth, but they've had to WORK - really WORK for it. Their sense of observation and even balance seem far more aware and open. The rich, generally, are criminals and/or assholes who most always see things from an elevated position. Some are neither, but I'd suggest that even the well meaning ones have prejudices that temper their observations.

Since the directors have not addressed this, I have to ask:

Where, in this film, is the producer (who especially in television has a very strong creative hand) to address the weird perspectives I point out above? And let me be clear, where is that strong hand, NOT to censor, but to address the shortfalls in the direct cinema approach and to do so aesthetically within the context of the whole film and its style/POV?

There wasn't one. She's a Shriver. Why would she even think about it? Sure, her credentials as a journalist, filmmaker and philanthropist cannot be ignored, BUT there is a perspective she has not been able to bring to bear upon this film that her directors also ignore. Direct cinema, in its purest forms and as we know them today were, in fact, rooted in colonialism, prejudice, poverty, working-class values and very little access to post-secondary education in the Canadian province of Quebec. (Though, it would also be remiss of me to not acknowledge the influence of Dziga Vertov's "Truth of Cinema" movement in the 1920 - born out of repression, revolution and the eventual sad march to another form of repression with a different name.)

Look, I'm not suggested Shriver nor her directors must have tasted subjugation to utilize this form, BUT it's of utmost importance for all artists - especially those working in documentary - to leave as few stones unturned in their quest for truth.

While the journey of Katrina Gilbert moved and inspired me, I could only feel saddened and defeated by the end of the film - not just as a viewer, but for her, those like her and the world as a whole. One of the very last things the film leaves us with is the knowledge that Gilbert is finally getting her first raise at work - ever! It's in the amount of a few cents. Chances look good she'll continue living in a trailer park.

All the film really leaves me with, especially because it does such a good job of detailing her struggle and allowing us to get to know her as well as we can, is one overwhelming annoyance. With one pen-stroke upon a check book, Executive Producer Shriver (who lives in a $10 million dollar Brentwood mansion) could make this woman's life turn around.

Instead, Shriver made this movie. On other people's money.

Welcome to America, indeed.

Paycheck To Paycheck can be seen on HBO Canada. For Dates and Times, visit the HBO Canada 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".