“Cesar Chavez” so fervently tries to be virtuous that it risks being dull. Dull it certainly is. But how virtuous?
The wonderful and rangy character actor Michael Peña winningly plays the title role, a soft-spoken Arizona-born farm worker turned labor organizer who, in the 1960s, organized a boycott of California grapes that attracted support from Sen. Robert Kennedy (a spot-on Jack Holmes) and national media attention.
Chavez starts out small then finds himself the center of a movement. After such stunts as a 300-mile march and a 25-day fast, he significantly damaged grape sales and even took his boycott international after President Nixon arranged to export grapes to Europe. Chavez made the cover of Time magazine, waggishly enough on the July 4 issue in 1969.
The cinematic problem with the film, directed by actor Diego Luna, is its plodding structure: Protest, march, picket line, rally. All of these scenes of struggle are intercut with Chavez’s opponent, a grape industry leader played by John Malkovich as a human refrigerator. It’s good guys versus bad guys, neither side has any shadings and these two men are essentially the only characters in the movie who count.
Chavez is portrayed as the ultimate victor — even bragging to the grape grower, “This little Mexican kicked your ass” as a collective-bargaining agreement is signed.
Alas, the true story had nothing to do with good or bad but with economic laws as straightforward as gravity. “Cesar Chavez” goes to some lengths to avoid what’s really at issue.
You can support unlimited immigration from a desperately poor country or you can support higher wages for farm workers, but to support both at the same time is eccentric.
Because we still have the former, we still don’t have the latter, and the United Farm Workers union celebrated in this movie is all but dead today. Back then, though, it favored restricting immigration, a fact the movie prefers to avoid.
The long-standing agreement of business and the Democratic party to keep the cheap labor coming is critical, but “Cesar Chavez” can’t be bothered with that. It’s too busy with feel-good slogans like “Si Se Puede.” The slogan may be nice, but it’s meaningless. So is the movie.