This Great, Diverse Nation

At midnight on the last day of the year in some countries people bring out their brooms, open the front door, and sweep out all the malice the old year brought with it in the hope that the new one can start clean. This year we’re more in need of a time machine to roll back the events that led to November 8 and reverse the outcome of the day that shook America to its core.

There has been too much loss this year!

We are deeply saddened by the departure of beloved activists Muhammad Ali and Tom Hayden; authors Harper Lee, Elie Wiesel, Edward Albee; film actors and directors Alan Rickman, Gene Wilder, Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher, George Kennedy, Patty Duke, Curtis Hanson, Michael Cimino; musicians George Martin, Prince, Keith Emerson, Greg Lake, David Bowie, Maurice White, George Michael…and too many others. We carry the dead with us because they made our lives richer.

So we try to wrap up the year taking stock of what’s been. In film, this is usually a rather happy thing to do because film is art-is creation-is life. And while it has been a year of disappointment in many of our fellow human beings who allowed the November 8 outcome, it hasn’t been a disappointing year in cinema.  I have three films that prove my point: Moonlight, Hell or High Water and Manchester by the Sea. There have been more –Loving, Fences, Birth of a Nation, Queen of Katwe, Sully, to mention but a few other American films—but these three have commonalities that resonate with what is occurring in the United States.

First of all the three take place in present day America. Then, the protagonists of the films are all struggling, working class Americans trying to make ends meet in a country where the American Dream has truly become that and only that  for a growing majority: a dream. While showing the plight of everyday working folk, all three films also majestically show what a diverse and immense country these United States are. There is Chiron, the black, gay protagonist of Moonlight, who lives with his drug addicted mother Paula in a rough neighborhood in Miami and is assisted by a drug dealer and the love for his friend Kevin. Up north east is Lee Chandler, a white, Catholic Bostonian janitor who goes back to Manchester by the sea to take care of his nephew Patrick when the pillar that held them up, his brother Joe, dies. Finally there are the Howard brothers, Tanner and Toby, trying to stay alive in one of the dying small towns in Texas in Hell or High Water.  Such different places, such diverse races and cultures, and yet there they all are, Americans, a big part of a nation that has left them behind. The graffiti on the wall in one of the first sequences of the film Hell or High Water pretty much sums it up:

“3 Tours in Iraq, but no Bailout for People like us”

Another thing the three films share is the tremendously strong relationships of love among the male protagonists in the three stories. The scripts of the three movies are centered on men, not to say there aren’t important roles for women, like Chiron’s mother or Lee’s wife, but they are peripheral to the main relationships. And the casting of these male protagonists has been magnificent! Truly great acting. What’s more, I expect most of the main characters of these films will be nominated by the Academy for one acting award or another.

Trevante Rhodes as Chiron in Moonlight

There is the ever more impressive Mahershala Ali who plays Juan, the crack dealer in Moonlight. It’s not a big part, but his acting is perfect, as is Trevante Rhodes who plays adult Chiron.  Jeff Bridges is ever great as Marcus Hamilton, and Gil Birmingham is another perfect cast as his partner officer in Hell or High Water, but it's the Howard brothers that are the ones to watch in this movie. Chris Pine surprises as Toby Howard, given all the rather “light” movies he’s been in before this one, but it is Ben Foster that shines as his brother Tanner in Hell or High Water. The depth of these sibling’s love is only comparable to their grief and the hardships they faced growing up. That’s somewhat the case for the brothers Joe and Lee Chandler in Manchester by the Sea, but while the actor Kyle Chandler is just right for the part of Joe and Lucas Hedges is a true young acting revelation as Patrick, it is certainly Casey Affleck as Lee that grabs your attention and your heart. Very likely this actor will walk away with the Academy Award. The supporting actress nominations for Naomie Harris, as Chiron’s mother, and Michelle Williams as Lee’s wife, are also probably a given.

Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham (Hell or High Water), Kyle Chandler and Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea)

As the year ends, film award season begins. It is my hope that one of these three films will take the Best Picture award at the Academy Awards this year, my preference being Moonlight also because of the great directing by Barry Jenkins and James Laxton’s beautiful cinematography. However there is a film that seems to be creeping up on these strong contenders, according to film critics: Damien Chazelle’s La La Land, so I should mention it as well.

I confess I will be upset if the Academy or even the Golden Globes gives La La Land a best picture award. This is not the year to retreat to la la land, in any sense. Not that it isn’t a cute movie with a good score and the ever-charismatic Ryan Gosling; one in which Jon Legend delivers probably what amounts to the movie’s best and only original lines. But it is a nostalgic movie, of not the right kind. It is precisely that “return to” (Make America…) nostalgia that has already led the unimaginable to happen.  

Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling in La La Land

Much like The Artist was a tribute to silent films in its time (another “huh?!” Oscar winner nobody remembers now, as was predictable), La La Land is a tribute to Gene Kellly’s Hollywood, down to the shoes. Yes, boy those were great times of dance and fun IF you were a white “struggling artist” living the life of … Beverly Hills pool parties, where everyone owns Prius cars, jobs as a barista on the Metro Goldwyn Myer Studio set, with thousand dollar jazz collector items? Oops, those are the “struggling artists” of La La Land. The director still sees Los Angeles pretty much as the Hollywood of Rebel without a Cause, I guess, because despite the fact that only about 27% of the population of Los Angeles is non-Hispanic white, the only thing that reflects this in the film is the opening dance number. There is, of course, the jazz club full of only black people and Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling (like in the segregated fifties of yonder year), and maybe that’s why Gosling’s character talks about being the (white) savior of jazz music. Nope, not going to be happy if that film wins.

This is not a time for la la land. It is a time to speak out for the disenfranchised America shown in the other three movies I write about. Many of those disenfranchised have been fooled into shooting themselves in the foot voting into power an army of Goldman Sachs and bigoted one percenters that will only make things worse for janitors like Lee, gay black men like Chiron, or the white, angry folk living in the small, dying, southern and rust belt towns of this great, diverse nation. It never ceases to be a time for hope, but let’s bring in the New Year with what we really need: a time for action.