Even the Rain

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10 Socialist Action march 2011 “Even the Rain,” directed by Icíar Bollaíin, starring Gael García Bernal, Luis Tosar, and Juan Carlos Aduviri. F (“Tambien la lluvia”) is a film within a film con- ilm director Icíar Bollaíin’s “Even the Rain”

taining real history along with a political message.

A film company, headed by director, Sebastián (Gael García Bernal) and producer, Costa, (Luis Tosar), are in Bolivia in 2000 to make a movie about Cristóbal Colón (Christopher Columbus). Their film is based on a journal written by Father Bartolomé de Las Casas (Carlos Santos), who traveled with Colón; he wrote of his outrage at Columbus’s and his minions’

exploitation and enslavement of natives for their gold; beating and torturing them in their efforts to convert them to Christianity.

The filming is disrupted by Bolivian activists in Cochabamba protesting against the privatization of the municipal water supply, which was undertaken that year by an international consortium that included U.S.

corporate giant Bechtel. The company had raised rates some 20 percent, and cut off water to households that were unable to pay.

The government, under pressure from the World Bank, installed locks on wells in which rainwater was collected. There are scenes showing people in long lines near the wells, carrying containers, waiting their turn, only to see uniformed men with guns, padlocking well covers.

Mass demonstrations and a four-day general strike shut down the city of Cochabamba. Soon the struggle “After The Revolution,” a play by Amy Herzog (Hanover, NH: Smith and Kraus, 2010). Premier production: Playwrights Horizon, November-December 2010, Peter Jay Sharp Theater, New York; featuring Peter Friedman, Lois Smith, David Margulies, Mare Winningham and Katharine Powell. This review appeared on-line in the Jan. 17 edition of Swans. A member of the Communist Party? re you now or have you ever been a Or a Trotskyist or Maoist group, or any cadre organization dedicated to radically challenging the political status quo in the United States? If so, there’s a good chance that your life experience has prepared you to appreciate the conflict that drives the plot of “After The Revolution.” Otherwise, maybe not. How you understand any play depends greatly on who you are and what you’ve done in your life, but “After The Revolution” is more likely to be subjectively appreciated than most.

In addition to the characters on the stage, there are three ever-present ghosts hovering over this play, only one of which is fictional. That would be Joe Joseph, the deceased patriarch of a Brooklyn Jewish Communist Party family. The two nonfictional spirits might be thought of as the Ghost of Left-Wing Politics Past and the Ghost of Left-Wing Politics Present—Julius Rosenberg and Mumia Abu-Jamal, respectively.

The central protagonists are Joe Joseph’s son Ben (Get it? “Ben Joseph”: “Son of Joe”?), and Ben’s daughter, Emma. Ben is a fierce defender of his late father’s flame, and Emma, at the start of the play, is her daddy’s girl all the way. Grandpa Joe had been a prime target of the McCarthyite witch-hunt, but he had emphatically defied congressional attempts to brand him a Soviet spy and had denied the charge to the end of his days.

Ben is a schoolteacher whose proletarian militancy has earned him the respect of his fellow teachers and the presidency of the local teachers’ union chapter. He exhibits a great deal of personal charm, but it is coupled with a rather inflexible sort of ideological pugnacity. Although the term “political correctness” is (as someone once said) most often simply a right-wing sneer at acts of decency, Ben is a caricature of political correctness. He delights in greeting Hispanics with the few words of Spanish he knows and he seems to harbor hopes that at least one of his children might turn out to be gay. Emma says he once refused to buy her a Walkman unless she would call it a “Walkperson.”

Emma is a talented and highly motivated radical activist who has built and led an influential human rights organization that she named, in honor of the grandfather she reveres, the Joe Joseph Fund. The primary focus of the Joe Joseph Fund is the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. She works around the clock to raise funds for Mumia’s legal defense and to publicize the injustice of his having been sentenced to death by a racially biased judge after an spread throughout Bolivia. President Hugo Banzer responded by declaring a state of siege. Protests were banned, and broken up by troops firing tear gas, rubber bullets, and finally live ammunition; labor and protest leaders were arrested in nighttime raids.

Bollaíin includes archival film clips of the demonstrations and the deadly violence perpetrated against protesters by the Bolivian military and corporatebacked security forces. The film crew ends up experiencing some of the same conflicts as in Columbus’s time regarding the working conditions and payment of the native extras.

At a “cattle-call” for extras, hundreds of Bolivians show up at a warehouse studio outside of Cochabamba. Costa and Sebastián choose only a few. A native, Daniel (a mesmerizing Juan Carlos Alduviri ), there with his adolescent daughter, Belen (Milena Solis), becomes belligerent when he isn’t selected. Costa and Sebastián confer; they decide to cast Daniel anyway because of his feral appearance and intensity. Daniel insists they cast his daughter as well.

Daniel ends up in a leading role as Hatuey, head of the native uprising against Columbus. Trouble begins when he either wouldn’t show up for filming or was late, so the crew had to shoot around him. Costa and Sebastian discovered why when they catch him on TV—the protest is the subject of a news story. When they hired Daniel, they had no clue that he was the voice of the water-rights demonstrators.

What makes the film intriguing are the frames shown of the film the crew is shooting. Daniel as Hatuey, and others, in dramatic, intimidating native make-up, deal with an armed and armored, grizzled, Cristóbal Colón on horseback, with his equally attired men and Bartolomé looking on in horror. Milena Solis is excellent in this scene.

Cold War redbaiter Sen. Joe McCarthy.

egregiously unfair trial.

Although Emma is a red-diaper baby who idolizes her dad, she is of a younger generation of political activists who have become sensitized to the often patronizing attitudes of white radicals toward people of color. When Ben fawns over Emma’s Hispanic boyfriend, Miguel, she later privately apologizes to Miguel for what she calls “the insidious brand of leftist racism in my family.” Miguel, however, responds, “If every time a white person was nice to me, I thought it was racism, I’d lead a pretty dark life, Emma.”

A much more serious generational divide appears when a newly published book presents undeniable evidence that Joe Joseph really had secretly passed information to the Soviet Union and that his sworn denials to the congressional committee had been false. Emma is crushed:

Grandpa Joe is not a heroic victim of polit(Above) Children from Cochabamba cast as 15thcentury native people in this film within a film. (Left) Karra Elejalde accepts Goya award in Madrid, Feb. 13, for his role as Columbus in “Even the Rain.”

Cristoból Colón, or the balding actor Antón—an oldtimer and alcoholic, yet still able to hit his marks—is played by Karra Elejalde in a long, curly, grey wig. At times you’re watching an entirely different film, which is a little disconcerting. At one point, Daniel stands up to the filmmakers, telling them that the women playing natives refuse to act out a horrific event with their infants, rather than have them fall into Columbus’s hands, (which they actually, historically, did). He insists it’s something they could not even dream of doing today. Sebastián cuts the scene.

Costa and Sebastián are dedicated filmmakers who sense their responsibility to the entire crew when things get hairy during the protests: shootings, bombings, people barricading roads, setting fire to corporate vehicles. Daniel is beaten and tossed in prison; payoffs are made in order for him to complete the film. Many in the crew beg the filmmakers to leave. Sebastián and Costa are torn. They want their film completed—yet their crew is in danger.

Costa’s conscience kicks in when he learns that Daniel’s daughter has been seriously wounded; he becomes an unwitting hero when he drives back into town through burning roadblocks and gunfire to help while the others make their way to safety.

Watching “Even the Rain,” one sides with the people’s struggle for water against the filmmakers’ need to complete their film. A film can always be made; money may be lost, but losing one’s right to safe, clean, free or low-cost water is death. n ical persecution but a nefarious spy, and a liar to boot? Her worldview has suddenly gone up in flames, but the older members of the family are far less affected, having not only assumed all along that Joe had been a spy, but finding that something to be quietly proud of.

Ben knew his daughter would be upset by the revelation, but he had hoped the shock would pass quickly and their lives would settle back into their previous routines. That was not to be. Emma is so distraught that she begins to question everything she had been doing in the name of her grandfather. If the sainted Joe Joseph had lied, and her father had hidden the truth from her all these years, how could she trust anyone any more? Maybe Mumia really shot that cop after all!

Emma’s doubts paralyze her work on behalf of Mumia and embitter her relationship with her father and her grandmother Vera, Joe Joseph’s widow. The elders try, to no avail, to explain the “context” of Grandpa Joe’s actions -- and there is context aplenty -- but Emma is having none of it. Her grandpa spied and lied, and she finds that unforgivable. When told that Grandpa Joe’s false testimony to Congress occurred just three weeks before the Rosenbergs’ execution, Emma seems momentarily taken aback, but even that fails to dispel her sense of personal betrayal.

And thus the stage is set for the polarization of the audience’s sympathies. Emma’s moral absolutism will undoubtedly resonate with some, and others will find themselves more in tune with Ben and Vera’s situational ethics. The beauty and subtlety of Amy Herzog’s writing is that (continued on page 11, in “Owners threaten football lock-out”)

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