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Plus Richard Massingham, and a too ‘underground’ festival
BY GERALD PEARY
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The press kit of The Gatekeeper, at the Kendall Square October 10, includes a long, proud list of film festivals, many of them Latino/Hispanic, for which this movie about the plight of undocumented Mexican immigrants has won Best Film awards. Has political correctness gone so awry that such an obvious, clunky melodrama gets so much respect? San Diego resident John Carlos Frey, who wrote, directed, and starred in this low-budget indie, is a well-intentioned guy whose heart is in a decent place, supporting the beleaguered immigrant. I could support him for governor of California. But his writing, acting, and directing are all pedestrian, and The Gatekeeper never gets beyond being a didactic, by-the-numbers TV movie. Frey plays Adam Fields, a border patrolman who takes relish in catching, and beating on, Mexicans sneaking into California. Secretly, Fields belongs to a redneck group out to win the USA back for Caucasians. Surprise! — actually, no surprise — Fields, though engaged to a non-Hispanic woman, is secretly Mexican himself. He’s been put off from his ethnic identity because his Mexican madre was a $20-a-shot whore. (There’s a sudsy scene, in which his ailing hooker mom, whom he reluctantly visits, flails around in her bed.) In a confusing plot turn, Fields goes underground disguised as a Mexican illegal; the next thing you know he’s hidden in a truck, driven into California by a crew of vicious Anglo coyotes who recruit him for their drug factory. It’s odd that The Gatekeeper has been so honored by Latinos, since everyone in the movie, including uneducated Mexicans, speaks in pidgin English! And several non-Hispanic actors have major Hispanic roles, feigning Hispanic accents. Simply, why isn’t the movie all in Spanish and with English subtitles? Why aren’t all the Mexican characters played by Mexicans, or by Mexican-Americans? PC audiences must not care. They are placated because, of course, Fields "learns." He must not deny his Mexican identity. "Hollywood didn’t want to tell this story, so I raised the money myself," Frey explains in The Gatekeeper press kit. MARK OCTOBER 16 at 6 p.m. for a curiously engaging evening of droll comedy at the Museum of Fine Arts. "The Short Films by Richard Massingham" features a singular British talent whose goofy stuff, 1933–1950, prefigures The Goon Show, Beyond the Fringe, and Monty Python. Sometimes he directs. Often, no matter who is directing, a mugging Massingham is featured on screen: a white-haired, suited, typical tea-and-crumpets middle-class Brit, but a little more befuddled than most. The works are either humorous instructional shorts, or parodies of instructional shorts, in which, normally, a patrician BBC-type voiceover lectures the English citizenry on how to conduct itself. Massingham is the celluloid example. And these are some of the trivial things he does as if they’ve never been done properly before: crossing the street without being hit by an auto, sneezing into a handkerchief, bathing (this is during the blitz of World War II) in five inches of water. And mailing his presents on time, so they’ll be delivered by Christmas. Massingham, who was a physician before turning filmmaker, died in 1953. The only American parallels I can think of are the self-starring, quirky shorts of humorist Robert Benchley, also due for a revival. IN LAST WEEK’S COLUMN on the fifth Boston Underground Film Festival, I recommended that readers wanting details of the event check out the fest’s website, bostonundergroundfilmfestival.com. The last I’d looked prior to writing, the website was positively skeletal, but fest director David Kleiler assured me that "someone in New York State was doing film notes." That mysterious someone vanished. Unfortunately, the website stayed a work-in-progress all through the festival. As a frustrated local filmmaker told me, "I wanted to go to the Underground Festival, but the website told me nothing at all about the films, and I couldn’t figure out where they were playing." There was nothing at the site but film titles — countless film titles — but not even the names of the filmmakers, much less descriptions of the films. And where are these films shown? "Allston" or "Oni" or "MIT" or "Home Inc." Without street addresses! Can I assume that many screenings were minimally attended? What did Kleiler say to the filmmakers, so poorly served?
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