A forgotten gem from roughly two months ago. The true story of legendary labor pioneer Cesar Chavez (for those unfamiliar, please look him up) who championed fair wages for field workers. American fruit pickers were/are largely illegal and the largely-Mexican/Central American or Filipino workforce was paid a ridiculously low wage by large agricultural titans who couldn’t have cared less if someone dropped dead from exhaustion picking grapes for $2 dollars a day.
What Works: The film is as relevant today as it was back then, which is perhaps a frightening indictment of how little progress we’ve made over the last fifty years in regards to worker’s rights and treatment of immigrants. It perfectly depicts how local enforcement often winds up in the back pocket of big business (the local sheriff is played by Southland’s Michael Cudlitz, a man who quietly tries to intimidate Chavez out of organizing, an accurate portrayal of the casual corruption of anti-labor authority).
But the real masterstroke comes in the character of Bogdonovich, a Croatian immigrant farm titan played by John Malkovich as a man who thinks his immigrant experience entitles him to treat his Mexican workers however he feels like. He keeps hiding behind a veneer of fake-empathy (he speaks Spanish and repeatedly refers to his early struggles coming to America) that makes him oblivious to the difficulties a non-white immigrant might face or how wrong it is for any one person to pay another so shoddily.
What Doesn’t: Is Michael Pena the right actor to portray Chavez? Something about Pena’s mannerisms and delivery just doesn’t seem weighty enough for the material. And the end of the movie has a very brief clip of the real Chavez that suggests the real man had much more gravitas. Plus, Rosario Dawson could shine in any role, but she’s not given enough to do here as Dolores Huerta, and I think many unfamiliar with the true-life story might not understand exactly what Dolores’ role in the movement was nor how significant she still is in fighting for field workers.
What I Would Have Done Differently: A lot of critics were waaaay too hard on this film, and it currently has a negative rating on Rotten Tomatoes. How in the hell that happens, I’ll never know, but most of the (very thin) criticisms seem to highlight how the movie portrayed Chavez as too much of a hero and wasn’t nuanced enough. That feels like dishonest criticism to me since you could argue that about most biographies and maybe the struggle between farm oligarchs and field workers truly isn’t nuanced. Chavez was a great guy who did great things, and the film doesn’t have to portray him as a bastard to be good.