Cesar Chavez is a biographical film that tells the story of one of the founders of the United Farm Workers group, which led a grape boycott and organized a 300-mile march from Delano to the state capital in Sacramento, Calif.
Cesar Chavez was born in 1927 in Arizona, and he began working as a farm worker after his family lost its farm in the Great Depression.
Struck by the poor wages and working conditions of a group of laborers that didn’t have a right to form unions, Chavez fought to change that by helping to form the National Farm Workers Association, formerly known as the UFW.
In early scenes, Chavez, as played by Michael Peña, is portrayed as a driven man, eager to get the movement started. When his efforts as an educated, city-dwelling Chicano fail to get farm workers to stand against the owners, he moves his large family to Delano, Calif., and once again begins working picking grapes to earn the people’s trust.
With the help of Dolores Huerta, the co-founder of UFW played by Rosario Dawson, and his wife, played by America Ferrera, Chavez organizes a credit union to lend farm workers money and earn the ire of local law enforcement.
The characterization of the farm workers as entirely good and the owners as racist and bigoted creates a pattern that is almost boring to watch, making it seem less like actual struggles of real people and more like Hollywood.
One of the more chilling scenes depicted Chavez and his wife leading a protest on a road outside a farm when two large machines circle the group and spray pesticides on them. It was chilling to see the policemen watch the scene unfold and drive away. It showed the value of the movement. There would be no justice for these people until farm workers won rights in their state legislature and were recognized by the owners of the farms.
The scenes depicting violence and racism towards the farm workers could have been more shocking, and could have delved further into the conditions experienced by farm workers. It all felt like a typical game in which the poor and good triumph over the rich bad property owners.
The historical events surrounding the beginning of the farm workers movement were all accurately displayed, but the scenes depicting them were uninspiring. While the scenes involving Robert F. Kennedy (played by Jack Holmes) were moving because of his words, they were anticlimactic at best.
The grape boycott became a national issue and was portrayed well in the film. The protests outside of grocery stores and the heated conversations between winery owners showed the scale of the impact that the movement was making, but lacked historical details or news coverage that supported it.
By the end of the film, Peña’s portrayal of Chavez was strikingly bland and uninspiring, and lacked the drive that made him memorable in the beginning of the film. While the film did a reasonable job showing the faults and successes of Chavez as a leader, it didn’t spend enough time on the organizations that helped the movement grow and spread.
Diego Luna, the director known for his work in Milk, could have focused less on Chavez’s hunger strike, which dragged on and added little to the film. The movie did not show many scenes about the other organizations that worked with UFW. Furthermore, it might have added to the film showing Chavez as a youth, working in the fields and experiencing the same injustices that he fought so hard against later in his life.
With only three million tickets sold in its opening weekend, the film wasn’t as popular as anticipated.
