A Better Life film poster
A Better Life film poster
Image: Supplied

As the US election circus winds up in preparation for voting on November 5 there are still some serious issues bugging American citizens. These issues may determine whether voters re-elect Donald Trump or choose Kamala Harris, who would be the first female president and female president of colour in US history.

Immigration is one of the issues. From the US to Europe, and here in SA, the idea of others, people who are “not us”, foreigners or outsiders, has proved to be a rallying point for intolerance, xenophobia and finger-pointing at anyone and anything except ourselves.

Here are three gentle but emotionally resonant films that explore the long and varied history and realities of the immigrant experience in the US. The country that, despite constructing its history since 1492 around the idea and value of immigrants, still isn’t willing to accept that black and brown settlers should be treated with the same veneration and appreciation so often given to their paler predecessors. They are films that often teeter towards sentimentality and glow with misty-eyed nostalgia. But they try to make pleas for an empathy of shared experience and acceptance, which is a message that Americans unfortunately still need to have hammered home.

THE ARTHOUSE ESSENTIAL

The Namesake — Disney Plus

Pulitzer Prize winning British-American author Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel about the experiences of an Indian immigrant family across the generations in the US got visually impressive and emotionally hefty treatment from director Mira Nair in 2007.

Starring Kal Penn as protagonist Gogol Ganguli, the literary named son of parents Ashoke and Ashimu, who newly married made the anxious journey from India to America and set themselves up in Boston, looking to make a better life for their children. Young Gogol, a child of America rather than India, struggles to forge his own identity while respecting the sacrifices his parents made and the heritage they brought with them from India.

Elegantly made and gently evocative, the film manages to capture the tensions between hundreds of years of history and the pressures and necessities of the present to offer a universally relatable drama about the struggles faced by immigrants from different places and across generations. It shows the ways that these influence the choices they make about the lives they live in their new environments.

Watch the trailer:

THE STONE COLD CLASSIC

Avalon — Rent or buy from Apple TV +

Barry Levinson’s solid 1990 drama about the generational shifts within the immigrant Krichinsky family as they make their way from Eastern Europe to Baltimore in the early 20th century draws heavily and fruitfully on the director’s own family experience.

Paterfamilias Sam (Armin Mueller-Stahl) lays down roots in the city and marries an American woman, regaling his children and grandchildren with stories from the old country as he tries to build a life for his family which, while adapting to the social peculiarities of America, still maintains its links to his Jewish roots. His ambitious son, Jules, disappoints his father when he changes his last name to the more Christian Kaye and decides to bet everything on opening an appliance store to sell televisions in the boom era of the 1950s.

With a deft touch for balancing the serious issues about the generation gap and its consequences, with a strong sense for light, humorous interactions of family life, Levinson quietly crafts a strong drama that’s specific, universal and heartwarmingly committed to the myth of the American dream.

Touching, bittersweet and lovingly populated with carefully created but relatable characters, it’s a small film with a big heart and an idealism that cynics may find a little outdated in the face of a possible second Trump term, but which rings true to Levinson’s own experiences.

Watch the trailer:

THE DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH

A Better Life — Prime Video

Mexican actor Demián Bichir gives a tenderly touching performance as Carlos Galindo, an undocumented migrant working as a day labourer in Los Angeles who fights to keep his son, Luis (José Julián), out of the clutches of a local gang. Director Chris Weitz’s slight but moving film refocuses many of the big issues of the US immigration debate through an empathetic human lens.

Borrowing the plot device of the Italian neorealist classic The Bicycle Thieves, the plot sees Carlos borrowing money to buy a truck, move into the arena of self-employment and make more money for both him and his son. When it’s stolen, he and Luis must make an eventful and ultimately bonding journey in search of it, and discover along the way that there is more that they share in common than either of them may have believed.

It may not always manage to keep its big themes from overly and clunkily intruding into its simple story but overall, thanks to Bichir’s performance, the film manages to personalise the experience of so many illegal immigrants living in the US and their hopes, fears and struggles.

Watch the trailer:

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