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As long as I’m making my debut as a movie reviewer, I thought I might as well throw out a review of a film I’ve actually seen. Last night the Doctor and I saw Bella, the film has pro-lifers all over the country so excited. It was the winner of the People’s Choice Award at the 2006 Toronto festival, which puts it in company with such smash hits as Life is Beautiful and American Beauty, so pro-lifers have some reason to be excited. And after having seen it, we went home happy, too. I wouldn’t call it a masterpiece, but it is sweet, charming, very positive, and sufficiently subtle as to avoid driving away viewers who are not already passionately anti-abortion.
Many of you probably know the premise already. In the beginning of the movie we see Nina (Tammy Blanchard), a hard-luck waitress trying to scrape out a living in New York City, being fired from her job on account of terminal tardiness. Jose (Eduardo Verastegui), the head chef and brother of the restaurant’s manager, runs after her and discovers what the audience already knows: she was late because she’s just discovered that she is pregnant. Jose asks her if she wants to “talk about it” and the rest of the movie follows the day they spend together, talking, visiting his family, and finally walking together on the beach. The final scene flashes ahead several years into the future and shows how dramatically the day affected each of the character’s lives.
Those reviewers who disliked the film mainly complained that it was boring and predictable, and there’s no doubt that it’s a slow-paced movie. But I flat-out don’t believe those reviewers who claim to have known the whole story in advance, because it avoids the pitfalls that turn so many Hollywood productions into groaners. The two leads are both physically attractive, and there is a certain chemistry between them, but the film is decidedly not a romance. Each is grappling with emotional troubles of one kind or another, but apart from two vaguely telenovela-type scenes (both relating to a traumatic event in Jose’s past) the movie is not overwrought, and even feels low-key and relaxed most of the time. There are a few points on which we felt that the producers overplayed their hand — for example, in making Jose look a lot like Jesus, with lots of bushy facial hair. But oddly, the reviewers I read didn’t seem to pick up on most of these. Only one mentioned the “Jesus” resemblance, and most of the other (as I thought of them) Fulton Sheen moments passed without remark. The visit to Jose’s family is basically the central event of the day, and everything about them testifies to the life and fecundity that (as Uncle Fulton would remind us) necessarily springs from real love. Jose and Nina are enlisted to help in the flower garden; we see scores of tantalizing dishes being prepared; before supper a little spontaneous dancing breaks out which, surprisingly, does not feel artificial or forced. A few reviewers sneered about “too much sunshine” in this household but the obvious garden metaphor apparently did not hit them. Nor did I see any comments about the Catholic symbols peppered through the film (Jose prays the Rosary in one scene, and we see clear signs in his family’s household that they are committed Catholics.) Apparently, what’s obvious to us is not obvious at all to a non-Catholic audience, so there’s no need to worry that the symbolism was overdone.
I could imagine some being annoyed by the apparent superficiality of this film, but at the end of the day, the lightness could be what makes it so effective. It would seem almost impossible, in our present society, to make a pro-life film without seeming vindictive or preachy, but amazingly, this movie pulls it off. It avoids the temptation to make its point through negative characters in the way that liberal tracts so often do. (See Million Dollar Baby or Happy Feet or a million other leftist “issue” films for examples.) Nina mentions that the father of her child wants her to “take care of the problem,” but apart from that one reference he never enters the plot at all. Bella also refuses to make its arguments verbally. Jose never engages Nina in an extended debate about her declared resolution to abort her child. Instead he shows her why she should not do it, by demonstrating through his own example and through his family what life and love are really about. In fact, Nina’s experience is the same one that is being offered to the viewer. Instead of dwelling on the evils of killing, it invites reflection on how much better it is to live. Roger Ebert declared that the movie was “not pro-choice or pro-life but simply in favor of his feelings — and hers, if she felt free to feel them.” It is a ridiculous thing to write, but in a way, a compliment. If moviegoers can take in so many pro-life sentiments without even realizing what they’re watching, so much the better. Gentle persuasion for the unconvinced is probably more useful these days than preaching to the choir. Hopefully Ebert’s review will persuade lots of pro-abortion folks to see the movie, and absorb the same subconscious medicine.
Stronger weapons than Bella will be needed to combat abortion in this country, but the results of such a movie reaching a large, general audience can only be good. Pro-lifers can go home feeling uplifted and affirmed. Pro-abortion folks won’t be able to find much to complain about, and the charm and overall happiness of the film might seep through to some degree. And for those on the fence, this is the kind of positive plug that can make a difference in how they see the issue.
I have one lingering question… does anyone know anything about Metanoia Films, who produced this movie? My casual Google searches didn’t reveal very much, and none of the reviewers said anything about them. But the Doctor and I can’t have been the only ones to notice that “metanoia” is a Greek word meaning “to change”, more commonly used by the Church Fathers to refer to conversion. Conversion Films? What else do these people do? I did read that they pitched the script to Hollywood a few years ago and were turned down flat. Apparently they got private backers — mainly Catholic — to help finance the production, and they marketed it themselves on a grassroots level. It’s great to see such an effort paying off. So go see it. It would be a great thing if we could get more movies like this.
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
I actually saw a premiere of the movie in April and heard the producer(Leo Severino) and the star(Eduardo Verstegui) describe their mission.
Apparently, Eduardo was a very successful Mexican soap opera star. He came to Florida to act in an American film - a big step in his film career - a learned English from a Catholic. She inspired him to seek a priest and learn about the Faith, because he had begun to find his worldly life unsatisfying. At first, he wanted to become a contemplative or a missionary, but the priest encouraged him to use his talents and influence in Hollywood instead. He found that very difficult, as none of his agents understood his moral principles and they continually encouraged him to accept scandalous acting roles. One day, he and Leo Severino(a communications specialist hoping to make Catholic movies) met by chance at daily Mass and decided to combine forces. They wisely placed the project under the patronage of Our Lady of Gaudalupe - they made the movie on an incredibly low budget, filming the entire thing in less than a month to cut costs, and they still won the Toronto Film Festival and got a reasonable showing in theaters too.
I am not a huge fan of the “restore culture through television” campaign, but I think Bella may do some good all the same. A few aspects of the film rubbed me the wrong way, but I suppose traditional Catholic sensibilities may take longer to revive than traditional Catholic doctrine.
You can’t find anything about Metanoia Films because it was created by Leo Severino and Eduardo Verstegui in order to make this movie. It is a new film company, but I heard they may have another film in the works.
That’s interesting — thanks to both Rob and Raindear for the background info. Raindear, I can understand your reluctance to be a huge cheerleader for television… one can hardly imagine it forming the backbone of a virtuous society. Still, it’s hard to deny that film and television are influential forms of media in the present culture. If we can make some positive use of them, that doesn’t seem like a bad thing. I definitely think that film and television have been used to influence weak minds in the opposite way — too often television becomes a playground for liberals who want to be ruthlessly unfair to conservatives/religious people without technically getting into the issues at all. And certainly television has been used to help “normalize” such sexual sins and perversions (homosexuality, fornication.) I’m not averse to fighting back a little, where we can.
I found a few scenes in Bella to be a little odd/questionable. Most of them I couldn’t discuss without giving away too much of the plot. But I will say that I thought it was a little strange when Jose goes on a morally indignant rant to Manny about how he needs to know his employees as people, or whatever it was. I mean, he may or may not have had a point about Manny’s treatment of employees… but either way it was kind of a distraction from the main story line. Anyway, whatever. The overall production was good enough that I don’t like to nitpick.
Clara,
I actually thought the employee rant enriched the film and supported the plot in an important way. If you mean to restore the dignity of human life, it is important to censure, not only obvious evils like abortion or contraception, but also certain individualistic, impersonal economic habits which underpin our society as well.
Ha ha… perhaps unsurprising that we’d have different reactions to that scene? Naturally I’m less sympathetic than you to this point. But I also found it distracting because 1) there wasn’t enough time to develop it, which made it unclear what the critique really amounted to. That Manny should just be a bit more patient with his employees? Or does he have to have heart-to-hearts with them on occasion, so that he, as Jose puts it, really knows them? Or is this about his cheapness with his kitchenware? It may seem to you that these are of a piece, but that wasn’t very obvious to me. A business manager has to balance a lot of different things. 2) Jose wasn’t really in a position to be giving a lecture to his brother, having messed up his day in a pretty serious way. Manny’s anger was justified, so it was an odd time to give Verstegui his one preachy moment in the whole film.
However, there is an upside to this, because I think you’re right that it may strengthen the film in the eyes of a lot of liberals who most need to hear the pro-life message.
I guess we probably shouldn’t be surprised, though I think you have a clearer idea of my opinions concerning economics than I have of yours. (:
From pretty much the opening scene of Bella, you get the impression that Manny has a higher regard for the success of his restaurant than for the welfare of his employees. Jose’s rants about Manny’s tight-fisted business practices because he believes that Manny bears some responsibility for the fact that Nina became desperate enough to seek an abortion. Perhaps the film writers picked trite examples for his rant, but clearly Nina and her unborn child are the most important subject of Manny’s neglect. So Manny’s anger is not really justified. People are more important. Good heavens, that is the whole reason Jose follows her, despite loyalty and gratitude to his brother. If you think Manny justified in his anger, then you disagree with a fundamental premise of the story.
In a small business, it is not difficult to develop a certain minimal relationship with employees which makes it easy to distinguish the scoundrel or idler from the good worker who has fallen upon hard times. Many of my professors followed this model in the regulation of their classrooms, as our class size rarely exceeded 30 students after freshman year. A professor set out certain rules for attendance or submitting assignments, but they often made exceptions for trustworthy students. It was my impression that Jose criticized Manny for the lack of that human perspective.
I know what you mean about distinguishing people in terms of their character. I also had professors like this in college. But is it clear that Nina would fall under the category of “good worker fallen upon hard times?” They didn’t say very much about her long-term work record, but they did make it clear that this wasn’t an isolated incident — she had been unreliable in the past. And we really aren’t given any evidence at all that she’s actually a hard worker or a trustworthy person. It seems to me consistent with the tenor of the film to say that her bad situation was, in very large part, her own fault. In fact, I think they do want to make the point that you don’t have to be an overall horrible person to do bad things.
If Manny has a clear fault, it is a lack of patience. He is hot-tempered, and thus he fires Nina angrily and in a public way when it would be more humane to do it privately, and he shouts at his brother in the kitchen when he should have been willing to listen to an explanation before ladling out blame. (Jose does seem to qualify as a good worker who deserved the benefit of the doubt.) So in that sense, maybe your right: I should modify my statement slightly to say that Manny is justified in being upset. Jose has failed in his responsibilities and created real problems for his brother/boss. He had a good reason, but that doesn’t make things any better for Manny, and in consideration of that fact it seems appropriate that Jose should be the first one to be conciliatory and explain himself. Note that the mother, who is obviously a very sympathetic character, basically sides with Manny, though Manny does also take some of Jose’s criticisms to heart.
Insofar as we’re supposed to conclude that Manny’s business practices are partially responsible for Nina’s desperation (and thus willingness to get an abortion), then yeah, perhaps that does cause me a little annoyance, just because it plays so easily into the hands of an already-popular liberal idea that the way to end abortion is through social and economic improvements. This is the idea behind Hillary Clinton’s “legal, safe and never” slogan, for example — if we had better health care and education and a higher minimum wage and all the rest of it, women just wouldn’t want to abort their babies. Well, I’m not saying that these social and economic issues are utterly irrelevant, but they’re pretty secondary to the much more central issue, which relates to the family and to sexual ethics. A society that sanctions sexual relationships between people who are not prepared to bear and raise any children who are conceived in them will always have a demand for abortion, no matter how good their social services. I’m not faulting Bella for not making that point directly — which would have been hard without getting back into the “preachiness” that they were trying to avoid. But I would prefer if they didn’t give people a chance to foist the blame on capitalism, which isn’t the main culprit.
However, as I say, I don’t think this is a very central theme of the movie. It doesn’t dwell much on blaming anybody for anything; the message is more “it’s better to live, and to foster life, than to die or to kill.”
By the way, did you once recommend to me a good book on Distributism? I have an idea that you did, but that was back before my wedding and move and all correspondence from that period is now kind of a blur… anyway, I’d still like to read such a book, if there’s a good one that could give me the fundamentals, and perhaps then we could have a discussion on that topic. My opinions on economics are not very definite, to tell the truth, though I guess I tend to doubt whether there is a single economic system that is most obviously in keeping with Catholic moral teachings. I worry that Distributism may be based on a fundamental error, endemic to Aristotle and St. Thomas, of thinking that material things have a definite and fixed “value” and that that value cannot be increased through trade. But name a good book, if you know one, that explains the theory better, and I’ll try to find time to read it.
Perhaps Bella does lack a certain integrity of plot. I forgot that the mother sided with Manny. If you recall, Jose accuses Manny of paying an alien less than minimum wage. That smacks of greediness more than impatience.
In any case, my personal recommendations for a Distributist reading list would include The Restoration of Property(Belloc), The Church and the Land(Fr. Vincent McNabb) and The Outline of Sanity(Chesterton), in that order.
Better yet, though, take a look at the list from G.K> Weekly in this post at my friend Bill’s site. You might also take a peek at his other posts tagged distributism.
“If you recall, Jose accuses Manny of paying an alien less than minimum wage. That smacks of greediness more than impatience.”
Hmm, yes, that seems bad. Forgot that detail. On the other hand, one does get the impression that he’s largely responsible for supporting his family and parents with his business. He’s an ambiguous character, I guess.
Anyway, thanks for the recommendations!
From what I hear they have in their plans a movie about Blessed Miguel Pro.