THENEWYORKER, SEPTEMBER 2, 2019 67
NEWYORKER.COM
Richard Brody blogs about movies.It also demonstrates a gratifying law
of movie economics: the greater the
frenzy with which money is thrown at
special effects, the less likely they are
to linger in the heads of customers.
And vice versa. As I cast my mind back
to “Avengers: Endgame,” earlier this
year, all that remains, of maybe a hun-
dred million dollars’ worth of wonders,
is a vaguely stunned impression of the
flamingly vast, plus a lot of hammer-
tossing. What strengthens the effects
in “Tigers Are Not Afraid,” by contrast,
is that so few of them are especially
special. I wasn’t convinced by the bat-
size dragons that flit out of a cell phone,
but the rest of López’s inventions are
properly grubby and grounded. A thin
red line of blood, which streams along
the ground, spelling doom, is kept at
bay by a hastily drawn boundary of
white chalk. The voice of Estrella’s
mother emerges from an empty paper
cup, followed by a long-nailed hand.
And the deceased, when they return,
are trussed in plastic wrap, as if they
were decaying food that somebody tried
and failed to keep fresh. The sound
they give off, I am obliged to report, is
a softly rustling squelch.
This mixture of poverty and fantasy
will not be for everyone. Compare the
angry reaction to Buñuel’s “Los Olvi-
dados,” when it came out, in 1950; not
content with revealing the plight of
destitute children, in Mexico City,
Buñuel had the temerity to swerve into
nightmare, with a scene in which an
exhausted boy takes refuge in sleep,
only to find himself wrestling with an-
other kid, in slow motion, over a hand-
ful of raw meat. Viewers today, I sus-
pect, may take similar issue with López’s
film. If, as she informs us at the start,
a hundred and sixty thousand people
have been killed during Mexico’s drug
wars, and fifty-three thousand have
disappeared, is a movie like hers not
an irresponsible distraction? Who cares
if gruesome crimes are assuaged, now
and then, by the advent of dreams?
My answer would be that López is
no escapist. “Every time I make a wish,
something really bad happens,” Estrella
says. The phantasmal, in other words,
offers no respite; it is simply part of the
detritus that litters the townscape, mak-
ing it that much easier for the resi-
dents—who are all too accustomed, God
knows, to a ruined reality—to accept
the imagined as true. What’s more, there
will always be times when the visions
run dry and even the imagination gives
up the ghost. As Shine says to Estrella,
“There are no wishes. There’s nothing.
Not even tigers. We’re all there is.”T
he most surprising thing about
“Give Me Liberty” is that although
it’s about a vehicle full of ordinary
civilians, careening at a reckless pace
around an American city, it is not a re-
make of “Speed” (1994). For one thing,
the city is Milwaukee. For another, the
vehicle is not a bus but a medical trans-
port van. Oh, and the hero is not an off-
duty policeman; he’s just a driver. If he
barrels along, it’s not because there’s a
bomb on board but because his impa-
tient passengers rely on him to get them
to their various destinations, preferably
without flipping either his van or his
lid. Somehow, against the odds and the
traffic, he succeeds, and the heartening
moral to be drawn from the movie is:
the fast doesn’t have to be furious.The director is Kirill Mikhanovsky,
who was born in Moscow. The fact that
he moved to Milwaukee and, at one
time, drove a medical transport van
is, of course, sheer coincidence. His
movie stars Chris Galust as Vic, the
harried driver, and Lauren (Lolo) Spen-
cer as Tracy, a fiery young woman in
a wheelchair, who, seated at the back
of the van, is ready to engage in—and
win—any argument with those at the
front. (Spencer, a funny and forthright
presence, is herself disabled.) More
voluble still is the bunch of Russians,
mostly old ladies, who shouldn’t even
be in the van. Vic, in an act of kindness
that could cost him his job, is ferrying
them to a funeral, a solemn occasion
for which they prepare by singing “Go
Down Moses,” en route, to the drone
of an accordion.
At an hour and fifty minutes, the
movie is much too long, and constantly
threatens to run out of gas; as a rule,
and with all due respect to “The Blues
Brothers” (1980), the madcap approach
is not made for the long haul. But
Mikhanovsky is all eagerness, and, as if
taking his cue from Vic, he can’t resist
stopping to pick up extra characters and
scenes, whether they belong in the story
or not. I particularly liked the gentle-
man at the Eisenhower Center (a real
place, in Milwaukee) who has a men-
tal impairment and delivers a proud
rendition of “Born in the U.S.A.” At
once breakneck and tolerant, “Give Me
Liberty” manages to be both rousingly
Russian and touchingly all-American.
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