Throughout the month, I plan to intensify my "film studies," reading back editions of "Moviemaker" and "Videomaker" magazines I've been meaning to get to and watching director commentary on DVDs.
One of the DVD commentaries I've been meaning to watch is for "La Bamba." This biopic of the all-too-brief life of 1950s Mexican-American rock star Ritchie Valens was one of my favorite movies growing up. I bought the DVD intending to have a night of nostalgia, and what better time to revisit this classic than my Movie Immersion Month?
I haven't watched "La Bamba" all the way through since it came on cable when I was a teen. Like two other music movies of the '80s that I love, "Flashdance" and "Purple Rain," "La Bamba" inspired me to pursue my interest in the arts. And like "Flashdance" and "Purple Rain," the "La Bamba" soundtrack is filled with amazing music, including the hit title track by Los Lobos.
There was something about "La Bamba" that I found magical. I spent a lot of time over my grandparents' house growing up, and I remember running through the house excitedly announcing "La Bamba's on! La Bamba's on!" one day when the movie came on HBO. Daddy Bob and Nanaugh Pearl looked at me like I was crazy, especially since I was usually a quiet, reserved kid.
Re-watching "La Bamba" over Fourth of July weekend, I realize one of the reasons the movie resonated with me as a youth is that it's a teen movie, but it's not teeny-bopperish. What I mean by that is, the main character, Ritchie, is in high school when the movie starts, but he's mature for his age: very serious and disciplined about realizing his dream of becoming a successful musician.
The main characters in "Flashdance" and "Purple Rain" had the same qualities. In "Flashdance," the protagonist Alex (the lovely Jennifer Beals) is only 18, but she's got her own apartment and works two jobs - welder by day, dancer by night. In "Purple Rain," Prince's character The Kid is 20-something and still lives with his parents but is very focused, hard-working and 100 percent devoted to his music.
Another reason "La Bamba" struck a chord with me - pun intended - is that a when I saw it, I was in high school and was taking Spanish. "La Bamba" was a cultural touchstone that helped awaken in me a lifelong appreciation of and interest in Latin culture (I'm still trying to learn Spanish all these years later).
But re-watching "La Bamba," something very negative jumped out at me that I hadn't been fully aware of as a teen. And that would be the negative stereotype that at least one major character represents: the character played by Esai Morales, who portrays Ritchie's older half-brother, Bob.
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| Esai Morales as "Bob" |
Not only is Bob an alcoholic and a drug dealer, he's a brute who at one point rapes his girlfriend (played by the late Elizabeth Peña). Seen through a modern lens, many movies of the '80s and prior decades seem politically incorrect to an unbelievable degree.
Chatting with my tablemates at a recent event, we got into a discussion of '80s pop culture. A female acquaintance pointed out that in "Purple Rain," The Kid slaps his girlfriend Apollonia, imitating his father's domestic violence toward his mother. By the end of the story, through movie magic, The Kid and Apollonia are a happy couple again and his domestic violence is never mentioned. The Kid apparently saw the error of repeating the family cycle without the help of therapy.
Since "La Bamba" is based on a true story, I suppose it was necessary to depict the Bob character as he really was. If the filmmakers had sanitized - literally whitewashed - the story of the Valenzuela family, it wouldn't have been authentic. Similarly, the makers of "What's Love Got to Do with It" couldn't have told Tina Turner's story without portraying Ike's brutality, even though it's a poor representation of African-American men.
And the Bob character in "La Bamba" does have his redeeming qualities. By the second half of the movie, we begin to see his "softer" side - he's a talented artist and loyal to his family.
It's great that "La Bamba" was made by a Latino filmmaker, and writer/director Luis Valdez did a good job of showing Bob's complexity. Bob's not all bad, but he's certainly not all good, either.
Bob is simultaneously proud and jealous of his brother Ritchie's overnight success. Bob pitches in to make handmade signs advertising Ritchie's first big gig, but then ruins the show by starting a drunken brawl.
There's a touching scene toward the end of the movie where Bob is alone with his baby daughter while the women in the house are away at church. This scene and a few others give the impression that despite all of his flaws, Bob is at heart a devoted family man.
And Bob's primal scream at the end of the movie when Ritchie dies in the infamous plane crash - "Riiiitchiiiieee!" - is one of the best in cinema history, up there with Brando's "Steeellaaa!" in "A Streetcar Named Desire."
In contrast to Bob almost being a villain, the movie's portrayal of Ritchie nearly canonizes him. The young musician is depicted as generous, sweet-natured, chaste and chivalrous toward his mom (the extraordinary Rosana DeSoto), his sister-in-law Rosa and his beloved girlfriend Donna (Danielle von Zerneck).
Even when Donna has seemingly broken up with him because of her father's bigotry toward Mexicans, Ritchie remains faithful to her. The scene where Ritchie records the touching ballad "Donna" shows what an amazing actor Lou Diamond Phillips is. Even though Phillips is lip-synching, he palpably conveys Ritchie's loss over the woman he loves with his every facial expression and body movement. Phillips wasn't nominated for an Oscar for this role, but he deserved to be.
I rarely cry when watching a movie, but I shed tears when Ritchie died at the end - even though I'd seen the movie before and knew the ending. The loss at a young age of such a gifted, kind man who had the potential to do so much for his family and his community was truly tragic.
Like most biopics, "La Bamba" isn't a perfect telling of someone's life story. But it's certainly a good movie and paved the way for future movies with Latin America casts like "Mi Familia/My Family" and "Selena," which, of course, helped catapult Jennifer Lopez to superstardom.
Whereas I've periodically re-watched "Flashdance" and "Purple Rain" over the years, I hadn't seen "La Bamba" since the era it was released in. It was an interesting experiment to watch something that so inspired me as a youth with adult eyes and to pick up nuances - good and bad - that I hadn't noticed before.
An interesting coincidence: In their DVD commentary, "La Bamba" writer/director Luis Valdez and producer Taylor Hackford said the opening scene of kids playing on a playground as a doomed plane flies overhead was filmed on July 3, 1986, and I happened to watch the commentary on July 3 as well.
An interesting aside: Right after watching "La Bamba," I watched Esai Morales in the 2013 movie "Saving Westbrook High." His role in the drama is very much a departure from Bob in "La Bamba," that of a gentle family man who works overtime in a printing shop to send his daughter to the best school in the city. Costarring Sally Richardson and Loretta Devine, it's definitely worth checking out.
