El Norte (Gregory Nava, 1983)

Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez in El Norte

Enrique Xuncax: David Villalpando
Rosa Xuncax: Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez
Arturo Xuncax: Ernesto Gómez Cruz
Lupe Xuncax: Alicia del Lago
Nacha: Lupe Ontiveros
Monte Bravo: Trinidad Silva
Jorge: Enrique Castillo
Carlos: Tony Plana
Alice Harper: Diane Cary
Jaime: Mike Gomez
Raimundo: Abel Franco

Director: Gregory Nava
Screenplay: Gregory Nava, Anna Thomas
Cinematography: James Glennon
Art direction: David Wasco
Film editing: Betsy Blankett Milicevic

Thirty-five years have passed since the release of El Norte, and the problems it depicts seem as intractable as ever, adding the poignancy of ongoing history to the film's bleak ending. As a document of the tragedy wrought by colonialism and the muddle of U.S. immigration policy, Gregory Nava's film is an essential one. Regarded as a work of narrative filmmaking, it has some deep flaws, particularly in the resort to overly "cinematic" devices like suspense. The intercutting between the plane departing for Chicago and Rosa's hospital room feels like textbook filmmaking, making the audience hold its breath to find out whether Enrique will really abandon his sister in hope of getting a green card. We don't need movie suspense fakeouts at this painful moment. But Nava does so much else right in the rest of the film, including the staging of the harrowing border crossing, as well as allowing humor to share screen time with pathos, that it's hard to criticize his lapses. If sincerity were everything, El Norte could be hailed as a masterpiece.

Citizen Ruth (Alexander Payne, 1996)

Laura Dern and Kurtwood Smith in Citizen Ruth

Ruth Stoops: Laura Dern
Diane Siegler: Swoosie Kurtz
Norm Stoney: Kurtwood Smith
Gail Stoney: Mary Kay Place
Rachel: Kelly Preston
Harlan: M.C. Gainey
Dr. Charlie Rollins: Kenneth Mars
Blaine Gibbons: Burt Reynolds
Jessica Weiss: Tippi Hedren

Director: Alexander Payne
Screenplay: Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor
Cinematography: James Glennon
Production design: Jane Ann Stewart
Film editing: Kevin Tent
Music: Rolfe Kent

"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim," said George Santayana, a statement quoted by Chuck Jones in commenting on his inspiration for Wile E. Coyote's futile pursuit of the Road Runner. It applies equally well to most of the characters in Citizen Ruth, with the exception of Ruth herself, whose only clear aim, getting high, she never forgets. Director Alexander Payne and co-screenwriter Jim Taylor crafted an audacious satire on political fanaticism, focused specifically on the American furor over abortion, but still applicable 22 years later to almost all of the many political controversies, from gun control to collusion with foreign powers, that dominate our divided discourse. Ruth Stoops is a hopeless case, too addled by whatever she can get her hands on to produce a state of narcosis and too much a product of societal breakdown to ever be the focus of anybody's cause. But when a judge, learning that Ruth is pregnant with a fifth unwanted child, suggests that he might go easy on sentencing her if she'll have an abortion, she is first snapped up by right-to-life advocates and then blunders her way into the opposing camp of freedom-to-choose proponents. Eventually, her decision (which Ruth is incapable of arriving at rationally) begins to be swayed by a bidding war between the two groups, each of which offers her money -- a rather paltry $15,000 that seems like a fortune to the indigent Ruth -- either to have the baby or to abort the fetus. There are those who find the plight of Ruth no laughing matter, and they're right. But Payne manages to stay on the far side of reality in his treatment of the subject, and he benefits from a company of actors capable of teetering on the edge of caricature without actually lapsing into it. Laura Dern manages to find something sweetly naive in Ruth that makes her headlong self-destructiveness both touching and funny. She is a hopeless case, just as a resolution of the abortion debate seems hopeless, too.