One of the first movies I saw in Los Angeles upon my original (brief) arrival here in 1982. (I skittered back to safety and came back for the long haul in 1987.) In the aftermath of a devastating earthquake, a young Mexican woman clutches her newborn baby and makes her way, along with her brother, through the rubble of a church where they were attending the infants baptism. (We presume her husband, absent here, has either died or abandoned his wife and child.) To the plaintive strains of Freddie Fenders tenor singing Ry Cooders Across the Borderline over the opening credits, the movie deftly, quietly paints a foundation of images depicting belief and devotion laid waste by the apparent indifference of yet another father figure, this one much longer in absentia, as the woman and her family move with no purpose other than survival, unconsciously drifting toward dreams of the broken Promised Land conjured in Cooders song. I havent seen it in many years, but just these opening few minutes are enough to raise my hopes that its as good as I remember.
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 22:26:23 +0000