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A Day Without A Mexican

Starring: Yareli Arizmendi, John Getz, Maureen Flannigan, Eduardo Palomo
Director: Sergio Arau

Reviewed by P. Joshua Laskey

Hollywood, California, is considered by many "The Movie Capitol of the World" even though Bombay, India, actually produces more feature-length films annually than Tinseltown. What sets Hollywood apart is that its pictures reach a much wider audience than any other film industry in the world including the venerable Indians and the cagey French. People in cinemas across the world enjoy and despise the same films precisely because Hollywood is able to market and distribute its product so remarkably well. A question is, thus, begged: why don’t more Hollywood films, although many are set in the town’s homestate, deal with California issues? Perhaps it is the very savvy of the marketeers (marketeers, mind you, not marketers) that steers big-budget, blockbusters to deal with "universal" themes instead of local politics. Why would people around the world care about Californians?

I am not sure if with A Day Without a Mexican writers Sergio Arau, also the movie’s director, and Yareli Arizmendi, its lead, set out to answer these questions. They probably only set out to tell a story, but the story they tell is as universal as It’s a Wonderful Life and may sink into the fabric of Californian collective consciousness just as deep if Californians get to the theaters before this movie disappears. To that end, let me recommend in the strongest terms, that every Californian see this movie. My hope is that as recognizable as is Clarence the angel and as beloved is Jimmy Stewart’s portrayal so to will be remembered and revered the names of Lila and Arizmendi.

Why should you see A Day Without a Mexican? It’s funny. That’s a reason to get in the door. Why should you stay? It’s poignant. It raises questions without preaching, and maybe more importantly, it doesn’t harangue those left behind. I didn’t walk out of the theater feeling guilty; I walked out speaking Spanish ogullosamente ("proudly" for you gringos). The state of California is full of Californians of all shapes and sizes, but it isn’t the shapes or the sizes that count in this film. It’s the common humanity of, well, all humanity that is celebrated and brought gleamingly into the light. Californians aren’t surrounded by Mexicans as so many politicians would have us believe. Californians are Mexicans, and Guatemalans, and Germans, and Japanese, and Brazilians, and Cubans, and Chinese, and Italians, and even Canadians.

The premise of the film-the disappearance one day of all the state’s Hispanohablantes-isn’t why you should see it. You should see it because the local politics of California-the propositions aimed at "protecting" our state from the invasion of aliens, the menial jobs performed by immigrants, the hotbutton issues designed to divide us-are relevant in the wider world because there are Moroccans immigrating to Spain, and Algerians to France, and Burmese to China, and there are Tibetans taking refuge in India, and Kosovar Albanians in Macedonia, and American Indians being marginalized in America, and Aboriginal peoples in Australia, and the poor are overlooked by the rich in South Africa, South America, and the South Seas, and because everywhere in this world there are people on the move trying to make a better life the best way they know how.Fear and ignorance divide us.

Fear and ignorance lead to planes flying into buildings and systematic rape and torture of prisoners. Fear breeds fear. Fear terrorizes. We need to look around and see exactly who we are. We need to open our eyes before we are so afraid of each other that there won’t be any point to civil society. But the movie is funny. It is clever and funny. There’s your reason to go. Stay for the experience.To paraphrase Lila Rodríguez, Arizmendi’s character: the best way to make the invisible visible is to take it away. Don’t take each other for granted.

Rating:

(4 out of 4 stars)