oscar jubis
03-26-2009, 08:10 AM
Chop Shop: Favorite Movie of the Year
by Oscar Jubis
I've been compiling yearly lists of favorite movies since my teens. The main reason is to have a reminder and a record of the movies I found pleasurable and edifying to watch at a particular time. Another reason relates to J. Hoberman's characterization of such lists as a type of autobiography. These lists and my writing about the movies I found worthy of inclusion will have to take the place of the personal diaries I've never kept. Chop Shop is atop my 2008 list. That's no small accomplishment. My obsessive regimen of two films per day guarantees fierce competition. The obviously significant question is how and why any given movie manages to stand out among hundreds.
The first sign is a visceral, almost physical impulse to watch the film again so that one can revisit the world it creates on screen, enjoy the pleasures it brings and entertain the thoughts it provokes. Some films simply make a very good first impression that repeat viewings fail to sustain. Films like Chop Shop reward the recurrent visitor with newfound excitement and insight. Perhaps I should write in first person about Chop Shop as one would write a declaration of love in a diary. Hoberman's characterization, after all, implies that these choices we make are highly personal.
I sense in Ramin Bahrani, the director and co-writer of Chop Shop, a wish similar to the one that drove post-war Italian directors to fictionalize the lives of the poor and disadvantaged and the places where they live and work. After Ale gets kicked off the bed of a truck headed for a construction site, he walks along a bridge that allows a brief look at the Manhattan skyline in the background. This is still New York, Chop Shop says to me, albeit not the typical New York seen in Hollywood movies. This junkyard nestled between Shea Stadium and La Guardia Airport where the sewers don’t work is also New York. Chop Shop gives me a very specific sense of place. I can almost smell the car paint and the empanadas from the lunch truck. People like Ale, his sister Isa, his friend Carlos, and Ahmad, the chop shop owner, are not characters one regularly encounters at the movies. Their presence in this independently produced film comes from the same neorealist impulse that introduced us to unforgettable characters like Umberto D. and little Bruno Ricci.
Ale is a boy yet to enter puberty but already forced by mysterious circumstance to fend for himself. His drive and enterprising spirit are admirable. I feel readily aligned with his point of view and regard him with almost immediate empathy. His joy when he reunites with Isa is contagious. I wonder how Ale felt sleeping alone in that little room atop Rob's garage when she wasn't around. Ale has a dream and Isa embraces it. Chop Shop's world is one where illicit doings take place under cover of darkness. Both Ale and Isa feel they have to do these things, help dismantle a stolen BMW or provide sexual favors, to hasten the realization of their dream of self-reliance. Chop Shop doesn't judge them and neither should I. But it's clear there are reasons why they hide these actions from each other. One night Ale and Carlos find out what Isa does at night. Ale vents his rage against Carlos after he innocently says: "Man, it was too dark. No way that was your sister!" then pretends to be asleep when Isa gets home. There's so much we learn about these characters through inference and observation rather than dialogue. The worried and angry way Ale looks at Isa when she's doodling and talking to a boy on the phone and the dejected expression on his face when Isa cuts short a celebratory cafeteria dinner to go with her Florida-bound friend Lila, for instance.
There's a rift between the siblings flavored by the dissolution of their dream and mostly caused, it seems to me, by the awkward shame you feel when someone you love finds out something unwholesome about you. Come morning, that boy I would easily dismiss as nothing but a thief if he stole my hubcaps will teach me something about being sensitive and graceful and generous. He will bring out the seed and enlist the pigeons to restore Isa’s warm smile and show her that everything's alright. And I can watch it happen as many times as I want. That's why Chop Shop is my favorite movie of 2008.
by Oscar Jubis
I've been compiling yearly lists of favorite movies since my teens. The main reason is to have a reminder and a record of the movies I found pleasurable and edifying to watch at a particular time. Another reason relates to J. Hoberman's characterization of such lists as a type of autobiography. These lists and my writing about the movies I found worthy of inclusion will have to take the place of the personal diaries I've never kept. Chop Shop is atop my 2008 list. That's no small accomplishment. My obsessive regimen of two films per day guarantees fierce competition. The obviously significant question is how and why any given movie manages to stand out among hundreds.
The first sign is a visceral, almost physical impulse to watch the film again so that one can revisit the world it creates on screen, enjoy the pleasures it brings and entertain the thoughts it provokes. Some films simply make a very good first impression that repeat viewings fail to sustain. Films like Chop Shop reward the recurrent visitor with newfound excitement and insight. Perhaps I should write in first person about Chop Shop as one would write a declaration of love in a diary. Hoberman's characterization, after all, implies that these choices we make are highly personal.
I sense in Ramin Bahrani, the director and co-writer of Chop Shop, a wish similar to the one that drove post-war Italian directors to fictionalize the lives of the poor and disadvantaged and the places where they live and work. After Ale gets kicked off the bed of a truck headed for a construction site, he walks along a bridge that allows a brief look at the Manhattan skyline in the background. This is still New York, Chop Shop says to me, albeit not the typical New York seen in Hollywood movies. This junkyard nestled between Shea Stadium and La Guardia Airport where the sewers don’t work is also New York. Chop Shop gives me a very specific sense of place. I can almost smell the car paint and the empanadas from the lunch truck. People like Ale, his sister Isa, his friend Carlos, and Ahmad, the chop shop owner, are not characters one regularly encounters at the movies. Their presence in this independently produced film comes from the same neorealist impulse that introduced us to unforgettable characters like Umberto D. and little Bruno Ricci.
Ale is a boy yet to enter puberty but already forced by mysterious circumstance to fend for himself. His drive and enterprising spirit are admirable. I feel readily aligned with his point of view and regard him with almost immediate empathy. His joy when he reunites with Isa is contagious. I wonder how Ale felt sleeping alone in that little room atop Rob's garage when she wasn't around. Ale has a dream and Isa embraces it. Chop Shop's world is one where illicit doings take place under cover of darkness. Both Ale and Isa feel they have to do these things, help dismantle a stolen BMW or provide sexual favors, to hasten the realization of their dream of self-reliance. Chop Shop doesn't judge them and neither should I. But it's clear there are reasons why they hide these actions from each other. One night Ale and Carlos find out what Isa does at night. Ale vents his rage against Carlos after he innocently says: "Man, it was too dark. No way that was your sister!" then pretends to be asleep when Isa gets home. There's so much we learn about these characters through inference and observation rather than dialogue. The worried and angry way Ale looks at Isa when she's doodling and talking to a boy on the phone and the dejected expression on his face when Isa cuts short a celebratory cafeteria dinner to go with her Florida-bound friend Lila, for instance.
There's a rift between the siblings flavored by the dissolution of their dream and mostly caused, it seems to me, by the awkward shame you feel when someone you love finds out something unwholesome about you. Come morning, that boy I would easily dismiss as nothing but a thief if he stole my hubcaps will teach me something about being sensitive and graceful and generous. He will bring out the seed and enlist the pigeons to restore Isa’s warm smile and show her that everything's alright. And I can watch it happen as many times as I want. That's why Chop Shop is my favorite movie of 2008.