Letters from the Other Side

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Audience Member I took a lot of notes while watching <i>Letters from the Other Side</i>, the documentary about how the much-politicized literal and figurative rift between Mexico and the United States. There were facts and figures that I felt would be useful to remember when writing my review of the movie later, there were emotions conveyed on people's faces that I didn't want to forget. I don't have my notes with me, but I am writing my review anyway because what seems most memorable has stayed in my mind, and everything else is everything else. It's a sad story, sure, about the many people who die each year trying to sneak across the border from Mexico to the United States. In 2005, there were something like 461 people that died during the journey. But they make the journey -- not as some sort of lark -- but because they are unable to support their families in their homeland. It's a very complex issue, the whole idea of border patrol and immigration. The U.S. obviously can't have completely open borders, but at the same time there are monumental ethical questions behind telling poverty-stricken Mexicans that they cannot cross the border in order to make a better life for themselves. And so on. The movie documents the lives of three or four women who have been left by their husbands and children, left in Mexico to survive on their own. Some manage, although sinking ever into despair as their families are torn apart. Some don't know what to do. The movie is definitely trying to demonize the governments of both countries (and succeeds at that, by the way), citing plenty of bits of information about the worsening Mexican economy versus the tightening constraints of U.S. immigration laws. But when the movie is strongest is in the human moments between the politics. When one woman is asked whether she wants her husband to come back, she shakes her head no while her daughter off-screen says, "I do." A teenage couple are spending a night together before the boy leaves for the U.S. The boy being interviewed has a wide, enthusiastic smile on his face; his girlfriend stands behind him with a look of worry and sadness. It is in these brief moments that the movie really says anything. A few women make pillows to sell in the market. When they watch a video of a rich American woman who has bought some of their pillows, they sit mostly in silence, only occasionally making a light joke. They seem stunned by the woman's unabashed opulence. Unfortunately, these moments when painful truth shines through are more the exception than the rule in <i>Letters from the Other Side</i>. The filmmakers, it seems, captured these brief moments by sheer accident while searching to make a more direct point. It's terrible that some women receive machinery for a bakery, but not any baking materials -- forcing the machinery to sit unused for months. But what's even more striking is watching the women reluctantly line up for a photograph with their newly-acquired equipment. They already know that it will not produce anything of value for them. In the end, if <i>Letters from the Other Side</i> is an affecting film, it is not by any talent on the filmmaker's part. The camera catches the women and their families letting down their guard by pure luck. It's more telling that one of the men in the U.S. has a remote-controlled air conditioner (and yet doesn't send enough money to his family) than that he breaks down in tears after seeing a video letter sent to him from his mother. But this movie wants to focus on the tears, wants to focus on the lack of money... when the gut-wrenching story is entirely told in the way the interview subjects behave, not in what they are saying. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/15/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Letters from the Other Side

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