#719) El Norte (1983)

The Plot: Siblings Rosa and Enrique Xuncax (Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez and David Villalpando) are indigenous Mayans living in San Pedro, Guatemala during the Guatemalan Civil War of the mid to late 20^th century. When government agents murder their father Arturo (Ernesto Gómez Cruz) and capture their mother Lupe (Alicia del Lago), Rosa and Enrique decide to flee their homeland and make the dangerous journey north through Mexico to America (“El Norte”), where they hope to live out the fantasy American dream they have been told all their lives. After several setbacks in Mexico, Rosa and Enrique arrive in Los Angeles, taking any menial job or day labor while trying to avoid Immigration. “El Norte” is a sobering, heartbreaking account of the ongoing struggles for immigrants, even after they have arrived in “the land of the free”.

Why It Matters: The NFR calls the film a “sweeping story infused with Mayan folklore” and quotes the Variety write-up declaring the film the “first American independent epic”. An essay by Ithaca Teaching Fellow Matt Holtmeier focuses on the film’s visual motifs and evergreen themes.

But Does It Really?: “El Norte” is one of those movies the NFR is all about. I was drawn into the world of “El Norte” almost immediately, feeling and hurting for these two characters every step of the way, and by the end I truly felt like I had been on this journey with them. The film walks a fine line of sympathy without sentimentality, with an artistic style that still feels grounded. This straight-forward, compelling approach helps an audience more readily accept this film’s depiction of the immigrant experience. I can’t recommend “El Norte” enough, and I’m so glad the NFR inducted this film in only its third year of eligibility.

Everybody Gets One: Gregory Nava was raised in San Diego and crossed the US-Mexican border several times throughout his childhood to visit family in Tijuana. The drastic differences between San Diego and Tijuana (separated by a mere fence) were the germ of what became “El Norte”, which Nava wrote with his creative partner (and then-wife) Anna Thomas. Fun Fact: While Anna Thomas was studying film at UCLA, she wrote the cookbook The Vegetarian Epicure, which helped ignite the vegetarian movement of the 1970s!

Wow, That’s Dated: “El Norte” is another NFR film that highlights how much easier air travel was in the 20^th century. You could walk right up to the gate!

Seriously, Oscars?: Despite being an independent production with a limited theatrical release, “El Norte” managed to break through at the Oscars with a nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Facing such eclectic competition as “Beverly Hills Cop“, “Broadway Danny Rose”, and “Splash”, “El Norte” lost to “Places in the Heart”, a Best Picture nominee whose major contribution to pop culture was from its win in another category. To date, the “El Norte” screenplay nomination is the only Oscar recognition for either Gregory Nava or Anna Thomas.

• The secret to the movie’s success is how fully immersed we are in Rosa and Enrique’s perspective. The first hour of “El Norte” is spoken in K’iche’, and the film’s first act is spent entirely in San Pedro with the Mayans and their customs. Once English language is eventually spoken, it is jarring enough to make you understand how foreign English is to Rosa and Enrique for the rest of the film.
• After an understandably tense first act establishing the character motivations and stakes, we get some much-needed levity in the second act. Before arriving in Mexico, Enrique is told to claim to be Mexican so they won’t get deported back to Guatemala, and that the best way to pretend to be Mexican is by infusing his vocabulary with frequent profanity. The first line spoken by a Mexican character in the movie is “Motherfucking tire!”, and this stereotyping gets a very funny pay-off later.
• “El Norte” gives us not one, but two border crossing scenes, filmed near the actual US border with cooperation from Border Patrol. The second is the longer and more harrowing of the two, featuring Rosa and Enrique crawling through a sewer pipe. It’s now impossible for any film buff to watch this scene and not hear Morgan Freeman narrating about “smelling foulness I can’t even imagine.”
• As if the sewer scene wasn’t unpleasant enough already, we get rats! So many rats! According to an article by Roger Ebert, those were actual rats used for the scene, and Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez insisted on performing the scene herself despite her fear of rats. Hats off to Gutiérrez and Villalpando; you couldn’t pay me to do a scene like that.
• The scene where Rosa and Enrique see San Diego for the first time is shot like Dorothy and her friends arriving at Emerald City. I know it’s meant to be a beautiful, pivotal moment for these two, but thanks to the likes of “Anchorman” the city of San Diego is an immediate punchline for me.
• The film’s third act in Los Angeles introduces two characters played by NFR stalwarts. It was a pleasant surprise to see Trinidad Silva in another NFR movie, especially after his character in “¡Alambrista!” unceremoniously disappeared. And at long last this blog has entered its Lupe Ontiveros era, with the late great actor playing Nacha, Rosa’s guardian angel who gets her a job cleaning houses. Ms. Ontiveros has five films on the NFR, four of which have been inducted since I started The Horse’s Head in 2017.
• I found this film’s depiction of White people very interesting. First off, there are mercifully no White saviors. The White characters are not here to help or support Enrique and Rosa; they have their own agendas and are completely unaware of what these two have gone through. The other intriguing aspect was that the White characters – especially Enrique’s wait staff co-workers – all have clever banter with each other, as if we’ve stumbled onto a Neil Simon play mid-performance (Simon also gets name-checked by one of these characters).

• In addition to the obvious comparisons to ¡Alambrista!”, “El Norte” shares a lot of DNA with another NFR movie: “The Grapes of Wrath“. I spent my viewings of both “Grapes” and “El Norte” worried at every point that something bad would happen to our protagonists on their journey to find a better life in California.
• The final few scenes are appropriately devastating, but not in a drawn-out or overly depressing way. Enrique’s last-minute ultimatum is a tense addition, and Rosa’s final monologue is a genuine heartbreaker. Without getting into spoilers: one interpretation of the final shot is that a character has committed suicide, but I think it is there as a reminder of the Guatemalan genocide, which was still very much going on in 1983, continuing through 1996.