YU-Qwest's Movie Special Interest Group
Film Review
Someone Else's America.
UPI Movie Review
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) -- Anything at all may inspire a movie -- even
a goat
in a Brooklyn, N.Y., courtyard.
That scene triggered an idea in the mind of Yugoslav filmmaker
Goran
Paskaljevic to make ``Someone Else's America.''
Paskaljevic perceived the lone goat in America's
mightiest city as a
symbol of the marvelously varied demimonde comprising this country's
immigrants.
Paskaljevic, a Parisian expatriate from Belgrade, tells a
warm,
funny, heartbreaking story of ethnic diversity in the squalor of New
York.
His characters live by their wits under the noses of U.S.
immigration
officials, unnoticed by indifferent Americans.
As Paskaljevic sees it, life for immigrants in this
country, with or
without visas or work permits, is high adventure filled with faint hopes
of attaining the American dream.
``The goat was a symbol of her life in the old country
for a Brooklyn
grandmother,'' Paskaljevic said. ``She was in New York illegally, unable
to speak English.
``She longs to return to Europe but is powerless to
convince her son
to take her home.''
Paskaljevic's protagonists are a Spaniard named Alonso
who has a
green card (Tom Conti), and a Montenegrin named Bayo (Miki Manojlovic)
who is in this country illegally.
Alonso runs a greasy restaurant in a seedy section of
Brooklyn. He
lives in meager quarters with his aged mother above the restaurant. Bayo
sleeps in a restaurant alcove in return for his janitorial services.
The movie involves Alonso's hopeless love for a Hispanic
beauty, and
compassion for his dying mother. Bayo is absorbed in smuggling his own
mother, daughter and sons from Yugoslavia into the United States.
The story also is generational: grandparents too old to
cope in a new
country, parents scraping by to give their offspring a better life. The
kids catching on fast.
``Someone Else's America'' is a view of this country
never fully
examined on the screen before.
Paskaljevic is not critical. His movie is a touching
tribute to the
human spirit, to small triumphs of good-hearted people living their
lives.
Slavs, Mexicans, Chinese, Filipinos, Spanish, Japanese
and Greeks are
not stereotyped.
hollywood: x x x not stereotyped
The races get along because they HAVE to get along to
preserve their
tenuous place in a culture too busy to bother with them.
``My characters are typical of millions of aliens who
fall between
the cracks in this country,'' Paskaljevic said on a visit to Hollywood.
``They speak broken English (as does he), but they
talk in their
native languages among their own.''
Predominance of English eliminates subtitles, giving
``Someone Else's
America'' a broader audience than most foreign films.
``I chose Spaniards and Montenegrins because these two
nationalities
are completely alone in New York,'' Paskaljevic continued.
``The others have formed societies or groups in Brooklyn
with Little
Italy, Chinatown, Koreatown or Little Tokyo.
``I've spent time among these people. They are a part of
society
Americans don't know about.
``Many people in the film are based on real individuals
living
clandestinely in New York. It is only normal I would see America in a
different way.
``I think when I direct a film I don't have to show
audiences how
clever a director I am or how much money I am going to spend.
``There is no violence. No special effects. The
picture is about
people and their emotions. I think emotions are pretty well lost in
Hollywood movies.
``Bayo and Alonso become friends because they are both
Mediterraneans
who lived near the sea, a natural bond of culture.
``They have no rights, no citizenship, no medical
care, no Social
Security, but they are no burden to taxpayers. Without them a city like
New York could not operate. So they are tolerated and almost invisible.
``They do the work nobody else wants. No matter how hard
they work,
their lives are better in Brooklyn and New Jersey than in Europe.
``I try to show the young generation is different. They
speak good
English and they intermarry. Their parents live on a mixture of reality
and dreams. The old people are sad and long to return to the soil of
their homeland.''
Paskaljevic shot his film in eight weeks in five
countries with
locations in Brooklyn, Montenegro, Greece, Mexico and interiors in
Hamburg, Germany. Cost: $5 million.
As a European and an immigrant he finds America more
tolerant, less
prejudiced against aliens than European countries. He says the French
are especially intolerant.
``People here are more generous toward immigrants because
this is a
country of immigrants,'' Paskaljevic said.
``What I love about America is that people of all
countries make a
life together. It's fantastic.''
Paskaljevic's fondness for the United States was not
diminished by
his inability to raise money for his picture here. ``Someone Else's
America'' was financed by French, German and English interests.
``My film is a big success in Germany and Spain,'' he
said. ``It
pleases me to think it may be well received here.''
