In other words, women in the movement for social change were getting uppity, but the transformation had not yet spread to conventional white culture. Most compelling is the Mexican maid in Bogdanivich’s household, treated alternatively as invisible and a confidante. In Cesar’s life, his co-organizer Dolores, and at times his own wife Helen, call about as many shots as he does.īut the growers? Even when, angry and frustrated, they slam doors in their wives’ faces, the women do their bidding. Without the F(eminist) word being uttered, director Diego Luna demonstrates the seepage of cultural changes being wrought by the Sixties. The growers’ wives, in their only substantive scene–like the segregationist white women of the Jim Crow South–manage to feel affronted when those with a different skin color simply gather. UFW volunteers use pen and paper to help barely-literate workers apply through the credit union for loans. Water during hard long hours under the scorching sun as a favor, not a right.Ī mimeograph machine churns out leaflets, after a typewriter is used for the text. In one scene Bogdanovich brings cold water to the fields as a favor for the workers when he wants to turn them against Cesar. John Malkovich as Bogdanivich provides a complex portrait of a Delano grower, an immigrant himself, but opposed to the UFW. Everyone almost hidden by the vines, working and scared to stop or talk with Cesar Chavez and his henchwoman Dolores Huerta, yet compelled to do so by the truth of what they are saying.Ĭesar is quiet and compelling his brother Richard a constant companion his wife Helen a no-nonsense woman, whether on the home front or getting arrested and Dolores a combination of effectiveness and arresting beauty. Claptrap cars negotiate the perimeters of the fields on narrow semi-deserted pavements, where the viewer sees, between the rows, farm workers caked with dirt, scabbed and scratched, working. The stunning visuals evoke California’s San Joaquin Valley from decades ago. There are clips of old newsreels that are fascinating in themselves, but it’s the made-up scenes that linger. … and catch it on the big screen if you can.

Jerry cohen ufw