Bread and Roses (2000)

Bread and Roses (2000) is a UK/European film set in Los Angeles. The movie was directed by Ken Loach.

The film is a semi-documentary about the Los Angeles Justice for Janitors campaign that begin in 1990. The movie captures the techniques used by the janitors and union organizers to bring economic justice to janitors who were overworked and underpaid. The janitors learned that simple peaceful picketing didn't work. Using the techniques of the United Farm Workers and Saul Alinsky, they had to make themselves annoying and unpleasant to the cleaning companies and to the companies that had contracts with them.

The movie also contains a romance between union organizer Sam (Adrien Brody) and Mexican immigrant Maya (Pilar Padilla). Both are wonderful actors. Brody is a true star. This was Padilla's first film, but she is a strong and forceful presence on the screen. (Yes--also very beautiful.)

Ken Loach is a brilliant director. I've seen many of his films, and I've never been disappointed. We saw this movie on DVD, where it worked well. Bread and Roses has a fairly good IMDb rating of 7.1. I think it's better than that, and I highly recommend it.

Fmovies: Same typical themes handled in Loach's work. I felt something strange, while watching it, maybe the San Diegan locations might be strange to the fans used to seeing English and Scottish cities. Nevertheless I couldn't say the effort of observation and insight doesn't work; the young Mexican gal propelled by the American dream is very believable, the unknown cast acts with passion, expressing the various faces of injustice and biases migrants must endure. However, my final opinion on the movie is that it fails to illustrate the real situations these kind of people live in and their genuine feelings, that is the Ken Loach's peculiarity.

As Sam Shapiro, a labor activist who helps Hispanic janitors in an L.A. office building to form a union, Brody's blend of earnestness and mischief really livens up this well-meaning, sometimes moving, occasionally didactic Ken Loach film. Brody's beard and bedhead make him look especially cuddly; no wonder engaging heroine Pilar Padilla eventually drags him into a closet for some hot and heavy nookie! :-) (My husband also remarked that all that hair made Brody's prominent proboscis look, well, less prominent -- not that Brody's noble nose ever bothered me, thank you very much! :-).

Bread and Roses fmovies. Elpidia Carrillo has a scene in this film equal to the "...I'm the best possible Arnold Burns" self-justification speech in A THOUSAND CLOWNS. It's so real and raw it's almost hard to watch. I saw this film at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, and it so beautifully delivers the drama and the realities of the Justice for Janitors campaign. Ken Loach does it again...with an American accent (ALL the Americas). Adrien Brody is Ron Leibman's NORMA RAE organizer if he were younger and less seasoned, but just as much the true believer. Pilar Padilla's Maya is all passion and youth and fun-loving troublemaker. The documentary style that Ken Loach uses is perfect for the subject.

I have a deep sympathy & connection with this movie, because two of my dearest friends were Spanish-speaking cleaners in the UK (although completely legally). Now - through ridiculously hard work and frugal living - they are bilingual, educated, skilled, and making a decent life back in their home country, where I hope to visit them one day.

As such, I can tell you that this film is so true-to-life it brought tears to my eyes. It also has moments of laughter and comedy, and an extremely important message to anyone working for low wages and low respect, and an equally important kick up the backside to people like me who never think we're paid enough, and forget about the 'invisible' people earning half our wages for doing twice the workload.

The actors (many of them cleaners in real life) are never less than excellent, and you have no trouble believing every scene. I encourage anyone to watch this movie, as it has an almost Shawshank-like feelgood factor, but is much more poignant and relevant than even that great film.

The additional programme on the DVD is not as informative as I expected (being more 'fly-on-the-wall' than documentary), but still packs a powerful emotional punch, and really adds to your appreciation of the reality behind the movie.

"Bread and Roses" is an engaging film about immigrant workers' struggles against poverty, state violence, and economic exploitation. I saw "Bread and Roses" at the Denver Film Festival thinking it was going to be a dry, lecturing documentary. Instead, it was a nuanced and complex dramatic depiction of powerful and engaging characters. It is rare to find such a politically charged film that is made so effective by presenting very human characters struggling with the contradictions of everyday life. It allows us to appreciate the tough choices we all make in conditions not of our own choosing--it allows us to explore issues outside of the knee-jerk judgments of good guy/bad guy and appreciate the very human responses to often inhuman circumstances we all participate in creating. The acting is generally very good, especially for a "low budget" production, but the main character's older sister delivers a monologue on her struggles with deprivation that still chills me to the bone even though I saw it months ago. Sorry for leaving out the details, but this is one film whose details you'll want to discover for yourself.