Raise the Red Lantern

Art vs. History / Perspective vs. Fact

Every human being’s point of view is restricted by certain aspects of upbringing and experience that differ fundamentally from the aspects of upbringing and experience that inform the perspectives of others. This fact is an inescapable characteristic of the human experience and is part of the reason why members of the human race will always fall victim to violence caused by conflicting misinterpretations of reality. What’s worse, any attempt to transcend the barriers of misunderstanding through personal expression is usually met with venom and accusations where there should be dialogue and simple disagreement. As a result, no matter how hard a filmmaker tries to remain neutral, any movie that attempts to examine a violent breakdown of relations between two or more groups is bound to be attacked and criticized by any party portrayed in the film or, more likely, any person that feels he or she can benefit by convincing a group that it has been misrepresented. This effect is only amplified when the groups in question align themselves by virtue of ethnicity or religion. I will always prefer dialogue to outraged accusation, which is why I agreed more with Ansari than with Wallia in their conflicting reviews of Earth, a 1998 film written and directed by Deepa Mehta.

Wallia is too hung up on the historical accuracy of the film and, because of this fact, misses the point of the movie almost entirely. He is, however, a better writer than Ansari and raises a few excellent criticisms that I must address. For example, I agree wholeheartedly with his assertion that “Mehta’s rendering of the horrendous tragedy of the partition of India in ‘Earth’ is simplistic.” This observation is correct, but the simplicity is fitting because the story is told from the point of view of a nine-year-old girl, Lenny, whom we might expect to see complex events in overly-simplistic terms because she is a child. Also, Wallia criticizes Ms. Mehta’s writing and character development. I concede these were only acceptable and definitely not first-rate; however, I am disappointed that Wallia, a professor with a PhD in Communications, expends so much energy criticizing Mehta’s writing without commenting at all on her excellent direction, which I felt made a creative use of color and angles, often giving the camera the personality of a child fitting into tight spots or peeking around corners for clandestine observation. Wallia does speak of the “impressive” cast, but fails to give Mehta any credit for the skillful performances she brings out of them, performances that often smooth out the rougher parts of her script. The worst flaw in Wallia’s analysis comes when he says that Earth “fails as a film.” It is true that it may fail as an accurate account of historical events, but as a film, a piece of art incorporating plot, music, and acting in a visual medium, it is a success.

By contrast, Ansari’s review is less developed but more accurate than Wallia’s. At least she sees the film as a work of art and understands that the plot is not supposed to be historically accurate but “a story of a child’s confusion about the partition, which embodies the confusion of the millions who are eventually affected by it.” Also, Ansari mentions the aspects of the film that make it so great: the direction, the music, the cast. She echoes my opinion about Mehta’s angles when she dubs her ability to give the camera a childlike point of view a “voyeuristic quality.” Perhaps I was most impressed with her observation that Earth walks a fine line between accessible Bollywood entertainment and deep art-house craft, a characteristic I feel some of the best films share.

Earth was a very rewarding film, I thought, a piece that was greater than the sum of its parts. It was historically simplistic, but it was emotionally pure as well, two fitting characteristics for a film with a child’s perspective. Plus, Mehta’s skillful direction and the excellent acting were a pleasure. The movie was a little short, but held my attention from beginning to end, which is more than I can say for most films with half its depth. Ultimately, the film’s experience as a whole is much like the final scene. There is nothing unexpected; the viewers see the tragedy coming from a mile away, yet, when the moment finally arrives, the plot’s transparency takes nothing from its emotive power.

Lamerica Film Review

I chose to watch Lamerica mainly because Netflix did not offer Before the Rain. For those students who did not see the film, it is about a young Italian, Gino, who goes to Albania to run a get-rich-quick scam with his father’s old business associate as part of the reconstruction of the region after the fall of Communism. To carry out their scheme, they must enlist the help of an Albanian straw man to sign forms as the President of the company. Unfortunately for them, the “Chairman,” who is not at all what they took him to be, runs away. Gino must chase him through the Albanian countryside where the young Italian is faced with the harsh realities plaguing the people of the region. As a result, he learns a valuable lesson about privilege and identity.

In the film I recognized several themes that are common in movies about the ravages of war (as opposed to war itself), poverty, and ethnic identity. Chief among these themes is transformation. A common characteristic of this type of film is that the story is told from the point-of-view of a privileged person who slowly metamorphoses into a member of an oppressed group through sharing in the experiences of the members of that group. These experiences are usually compartmentalized by way of an episodic plot structure, what Berardinelli labels “vignettes,” in which a specific layer of the protagonist’s identity is stripped away, often symbolized by the loss of a material possession: a car, a watch, a pair of sunglasses. When the protagonist is fully transformed, sometimes shown by his or her death, the film is over. This structure assumes that the audience watching the film will be members of some privileged class and will gain a greater empathy toward the oppressed group by sharing in the experiences of the protagonist.

Lamerica fits into this structure very well. Gino expects to be treated well by Albanians because he is an Italian. In fact, the Albanians do show an air of reverence for all things Italian, from shoes to the football team, and they treat Gino with respect as long as he can maintain his Italian identity. As his identity slowly slips away from him, the Albanians treat him more and more as an equal. Sometimes, this change is bad for him, like when his sunglasses are stolen; sometimes it is good, as when the Albanians help him onto a moving truck. Fortunately for Gino, he does not have to die to experience full transformation, but, in essence, his privilege does die when he is arrested by the Albanian authorities and thrown into a hellish cell reminiscent of the prison where he and his partner found their “Albanian” straw man earlier in the film. The tables have been turned at this point. Where Gino was originally going to exploit the Albanians to get what he wanted, he now is used as a means to an end for the Albanian officer who wants to obtain evidence against the corrupt official involved in Gino’s scam. When his papers are taken from him, Gino effectively becomes Albanian, and he must “immigrate” to his own native Italy aboard a rusted ship packed full with souls yearning for a better life.

On the surface, Lamerica’s visual style speaks volumes about the poverty in Albania in the early nineties. Everyone and everything is filthy and broken, but yet retains an aura of familiarity. The director, Gianni Amelio, did a great job of keeping the onscreen dirt realistic. The Internet Movie Database (IMDB) lists three filming locations for the movie, all in Albania. Filming there was probably the best decision that the director made. The audience gets a real sense of a dying society, crumbling in the ruins of former modernization and perhaps even stability. For example, there are quite a few modern-looking buildings, but they are all collapsing and marked with crude graffiti. The people, who I assume to be true Albanians, look familiar, but a lack of food, proper medical care, and good hygiene has left them scarred and often broken. It is precisely this sense of skewed familiarity that breaks both Gino and the audience out of their comfort zones and readies them for their transformations. At first, as in the early jail scene, the Albanians can be ugly, even frightening, but at the end of the film, their beauty is allowed to shine through, as in the series of what Goldsmith termed “filmed portraits” in the final scene. In fact, Goldsmith’s comparison of the boat portraits at the end of Lamerica to Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans’ filming of the rural poor in the Great Depression further emphasizes the familiarity of the Albanians plight by reminding the audience that a great many middle-class Americans are only two generations away from abject poverty.

Perhaps Lamerica’s portrayal of poverty is its greatest triumph because it is able to make poverty simultaneously metaphorical and realistic, both a product of oppression and a marker of identity. The film shows its subjects’ total destitution while allowing them to maintain their dignity and humanity. By peeling back the layers of privilege that Gino brings with him to Albania, the audience is able to see, through his new-found poverty, the excellent characteristics he possesses underneath his formerly polished exterior, mainly his humility. Ultimately Lamerica should be enjoyed in the same way; it is a rewarding film, if not a terribly entertaining one, but its rewards only shine through if the members of the audience are willing to peel back the rough layers of its desolate setting and action-less plot, contemplating all the value that they find underneath.

Want to read a better review? Try this one:

Maslin, Janet. "Scheming Italians in Troubled Albania." "New York Times." 04 Oct. 1995.
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