ADRIAN FLORIDO, HOST:
Ever since we've been making movies, we've been making them about the most American of stories, the immigrant story. In the silent era, Charlie Chaplin directed and starred in a film called "The Immigrant." And later, epics like "The Godfather" told the story of an immigrant to the U.S. looking for a better life on a grand scale.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE GODFATHER")
SALVATORE CORSITTO: (As Bonasera) I believe in America. America has made my fortune.
FLORIDO: With immigration front and center today, we wanted to explore what movies teach us about this story that is so foundational to our culture, what movies get it right, which ones get it wrong and what stories are not yet being told about the immigrant experience. To get into all this, I'm joined now by Ryan Benk, a producer on Weekend Edition and NPR music reporter Isabella Gomez Sarmiento. Welcome to both of you.
RYAN BENK, BYLINE: Hey.
ISABELLA GOMEZ SARMIENTO, BYLINE: Hi. Thanks for having us.
FLORIDO: Hey, Ryan, let me start with you. What are some of the quintessential immigrant movies for you?
BENK: Yeah, I mean, I'll start with, like, what might be somewhat controversial. My dad came to the States immigrating to Miami from Nicaragua in the 1980s. And, you know, as much of a checkered reputation as "Scarface" might have some immigrant communities, it was a staple in our household growing up.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SCARFACE")
GARNETT SMITH: (As Immigration Officer #1) So what do you call yourself, eh? Como se llama?
AL PACINO: (As Tony Montana) Antonio Montana. And you, what you call yourself?
BENK: Honestly, I could scarcely remember going into any Latino's house in South Florida without seeing either the words - the world is yours - or a picture of Al Pacino's Tony Montana somewhere in that home.
FLORIDO: On the walls of the house?
BENK: Oh, yeah.
FLORIDO: Wow.
BENK: I mean, they used to have the shirts and posters that you could buy at the county - Miami-Dade County Fair. And instead of focusing on the violence and the brutality of the life of a rising coke kingpin, what a lot of people saw was their own story and the grit and determination that it takes to make it when you come to the United States.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SCARFACE")
STEVEN BAUER: (As Manny Ribera) I say, be happy with what you got.
PACINO: (As Tony Montana) You be happy. Me, I want what's coming to me.
BAUER: (As Manny Ribera) Oh, well, what's coming to you?
PACINO: (As Tony Montana) The world, chico.
FLORIDO: Isabella, what about you?
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: Well, I immigrated to the U.S. when I was 7 years old, and I think because I went through that experience as a kid and maybe I was protected or shielded from some of the most difficult aspects of the immigration experience, I'm really moved by films that sort of capture how immigrants build their lives in a different country once they've arrived and how they look back or grapple with what they've left behind. So I think one really great example of this in the last few years has been the movie "Past Lives"...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "PAST LIVES")
GRETA LEE: (As Nora) He was just this kid in my head for such a long time. And then he was just this image on my laptop. And now he is a physical person.
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: ...You know, about this Korean writer who reconnects with a childhood friend that she had back home and this kind of notion of both a lost love, but also who you might have been if you hadn't immigrated and what the people in your life could have meant to you or do mean to you currently. I think that's a really moving story.
FLORIDO: What I really like about "Past Lives" also is that although it does focus on the story of this Korean woman and her new life in the U.S., it doesn't forget about the story of the boy that she left behind and what became of his life...
BENK: Yeah.
FLORIDO: ...Which is such an important part of the immigrant story that sometimes we forget about but is so fundamental to that rupture that happens when someone decides to leave, often leaving people they love behind, you know (ph)?
BENK: Yeah. You know, and just like Isabella says, we don't really get to see the immigrant story play out much past the arrival. We also don't always get to see what it takes for an immigrant to actually make it to the United States in the first place. And that reminds me of a movie called "Sin Nombre" that came out in 2009, which he's a former gang member attempting to get his girlfriend to the United States. All the while, they're being chased by murderous members of his former gang.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SIN NOMBRE")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character, speaking Spanish).
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character, speaking Spanish).
BENK: It really mirrors the kind of difficulties that people have to face - the real difficulties that people have to face to get here in the first place. And I think that's important.
FLORIDO: Probably the first movie in my memory that dealt with the immigrant story, at least the ones that we watched in my house, was "Born In East L.A."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BORN IN EAST L.A.")
TERRENCE EVANS: (As Immigration Officer) Where were you born?
CHEECH MARIN: (As Rudy) I was born in East LA, man.
EVANS: (As Immigration Officer) And who's the president of the United States?
MARIN: (As Rudy) That cowboy guy on TV, the guy was on "Death Valley Days." I was (ph) - John Wayne.
FLORIDO: It was a screwball comedy, and it was a big movie in my household. And it was about this man played by Cheech Marin, who is a U.S. citizen, Chicano, Mexican American born in East Los Angeles, who gets mistakenly rounded up and deported, even though he's a U.S. citizen. And the whole movie revolves around his attempts to get back into the U.S. from Tijuana, Mexico, trying to convince U.S. border officials that he is, in fact, a U.S. citizen, and they don't believe him.
At the time, just felt like such a screwball - almost divorced from the reality of this experience. But now you see the way that a lot of these immigration raids are being carried out across the country, and they are indiscriminate. There are U.S. citizens being picked up.
BENK: Right.
FLORIDO: And it's made me reassess that movie within that context and think about maybe this thing that seemed so absurd back then really was accurate in a lot of ways. Ryan, Isabella, what about films that don't get the immigrant story right?
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: Listen, not to rain on Ryan's parade 'cause I know he loves this movie...
FLORIDO: Uh oh.
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: ...But "Scarface," for me, big, no-no.
FLORIDO: Ah, throwing down the gauntlet (laughter).
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: I just don't like how it depicts immigrants as criminals, so sorry to Ryan. Sorry to "Scarface."
BENK: Ouch.
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: In general, I'm not a big fan of the sort of cartel stories or films that tend to center the immigrant experience around the drug wars or around crime. I think it really sort of flattens the diversity of what people go through.
BENK: Yeah, just like "Scarface" kind of grinds Isabella's gears, for me, it's got to be the "Sicario" series, particularly the second movie in the series.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SICARIO: DAY OF THE SOLDADO")
GRAHAM BECKEL: (As Dale Hammonds) Next week, the president's adding drug cartels to the list of terrorist organizations.
MATTHEW MODINE: (As James Riley) You can understand how that will expand our ability to combat them.
BENK: "Sicario 2: The Day of Soldado" (ph) really conflates the threat of terrorism with immigration, specifically undocumented immigration. And of course, the reason that this is so harmful is because it's an actual line that gets used to draw fear against immigrants in our political conversations today.
FLORIDO: You know, we're living through a time, as we all know, where there is no lack of immigrant stories to mind. What stories would you want filmmakers to bring to the screen that maybe we haven't seen before or maybe not recently, but speak more to the way that the immigrant experience is playing out in the country right now? Isabella?
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: I want to see more nuanced stories about the impact that immigration has over time and also stories where we allow immigrants to be great and recognize that they were great in their country and can be great in this country. I think a really great example of this is the film "The Brutalist" starring Adrien Brody.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE BRUTALIST")
GUY PEARCE: (As Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr.) Tell me, why is an accomplished foreign architect shoveling coal here in Philadelphia?
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: It's this 3 1/2-hour epic of a Hungarian Jewish architect who comes to the U.S. after World War II, and you follow him over decades. And you see the sort of fall out of his personal relationships, and you see the trauma and violence that is inflicted on immigrants. And at the same time, you get to see this architect be recognized for pioneering brutalism. I think it's a really lovely and nuanced depiction of how complicated but how beautiful the immigration story can be.
FLORIDO: Ryan, what about you?
BENK: Well, you know, in terms of second-generation experience of immigration, I think, is something that we don't get to see a lot of as well. I think of movies like "The Farewell," which is this touching story of one woman's return to her family's homeland in China to say goodbye to her dying grandmother, except the grandmother doesn't actually know that she's dying. They've somehow kept this diagnosis from her. So they create this entire ruse of a wedding in order to bring all the family from all different corners of the world back to this small town that they are from to spend some final moments with their grandmother.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE FAREWELL")
AWKWAFINA: (As Billi) Shouldn't we tell her? Isn't it wrong to lie?
LIN HONG: (As Doctor Wu) It's a good lie. Most families in China would choose not to tell her.
BENK: And what I really enjoyed about it was that kind of mentality of return that Isabella talks about, where you see a second-generation immigrant who has grown up in a completely different context than her parents and her parents' family coming back to that place, and it's a physical journey, but it's also an emotional and psychological journey.
FLORIDO: All right. Well, a lot of potential, a lot of opportunity, and a lot of movies to catch up on that I haven't seen that you've mentioned that now I'm eager to go watch.
BENK: (Laughter).
FLORIDO: So thank you to both of you. NPR's Ryan Benk and Isabella Gomez Sarmiento. We've been talking about movies telling the immigrant story.
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: Thank you so much.
BENK: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOSS SONG, "SOFTPRETTY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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