A BETTER LIFE

A Better Life

A Better Life

Introduction

The aim of this paper is to describe a problem, struggle, or challenge that caused some discomfort in life of the person. We have chosen to present the struggles of the lead character of famous movie “A Better Life”.

Carlos, the lead character in director Chris Weitz's "A Better Life" — a new movie about the personal struggles of a Mexican gardener in the United States illegally — had scraped together every last dollar to buy a used pickup. With the vehicle, Carlos (played by Mexican star Demian Bichir) could become his own boss, build a landscaping business and care better for his teenage son, Luis (newcomer Jose Julian), who was drifting toward gang life. But mere hours after Carlos closed the truck sale, a day laborer stole his pickup, and Carlos was trying to find it in Premier Fiesta Mexicana's parking lot (Dave, 2011).

The Story

For Carlos (Demián Bichir), an undocumented Mexican day laborer who arrived in Los Angeles six years earlier, work is all-consuming. Rising at dawn in his ramshackle South Central rental, he spends long days tending to the well-fed lawns of the affluent, barely seeing his 14-year-old son, Luis (José Julián). Uncommunicative and a little hotheaded, Luis is teetering on the brink of expulsion from school and initiation into a local gang with family ties to his feisty girlfriend (Chelsea Rendon), but it's clear he's more a thoughtful loner than a mindless joiner (Cieply, 2010).

For Luis, who's all-American from his birth certificate to his accent, Carlos isn't just his father, he's also a periodically embarrassing ambassador from a foreign land, a Mexican immigrant as seemingly unassimilated as he is undocumented.

Carlos scrapes together money as a helper to a gardener with steady clients. Only now his boss wants to return to Mexico and offers to sell him the truck with all its gardening equipment. Carlos' problem, as it has always been, is he has no driver's license. Any stop by a cop will quickly confirm his undocumented status. Plus, he doesn't begin to have the money to buy the truck.

Hopes get cruelly raised, then dashed when his sister loans Carlos enough money to purchase the truck only for it to disappear the first day on the job. His search for the thief, with Luis a reluctant companion, takes them into gang territory and into contact with strangers with possible ulterior motivations. It's ...