La Cocina 2024 Download via Magnet
44/50
Our LoveWritten by Al HazanPerformed by The Starr Sisters
In the heart of a bustling Times Square kitchen, dreams and despair collide as the staff each pursue the elusive American Dream. Mexican director Alonso Ruizpalacios’ bold and unusual film, ‘La Cocina’ (2024), instantly reminded me of Charlie Chaplin’s ‘Modern Times’. Both films have a memorable scene that visually and symbolically represents everything that is wrong with the dehumanization of work. Overall, both films present scathing and courageous critiques of heinous aspects of the capitalist system, of course in different centuries and at different stages. ‘La Cocina’ combines this theme with that of illegal immigration in America today.
However, we never go through the front door
Films about immigration in America have a tradition, one could say they represent a genre of their own. What is special about Ruizpalacios’ film is that the point of view is that of the immigrants. The director, most of the producers, the technical crew, the actors and the heroes of the film are mostly non-American. The director is also the author of the screenplay, adapted to the realities of today’s America and a play (which also became a film screenplay) by the English playwright Arnold Wesker. The story takes place in a restaurant called “The Grill” in the center of Manhattan, somewhere near Times Square.
Pedro is having an affair with the waitress Julia, who is pregnant
From the first scene, we are directed to the back entrance, and we only see the restaurant itself, with its local or tourist customers, twice in the film. The rest of the story takes place in the kitchen where dozens of dishes are prepared at a hellish pace for the hundreds of customers, or in the alleys or interior courtyards where the enormous garbage bags constantly generated by the garbage machine are stored. Estela, an immigrant (probably illegal) who doesn’t speak a word of English, is hired to work in the kitchen alongside Pedro, also an illegal immigrant, who has been working in the restaurant for several years. The woman wants to terminate the pregnancy, the man – who may love her or simply wants to sort out her legal situation in some way – would like her to keep the baby. When $832 disappears from one of the slot machines, the entire staff, mostly immigrants, is suspect.
“La Cocina” is not an easy movie to watch
The temperature rises in the hell that is already the restaurant’s kitchen. It is quite long and has moments where the story drags and the dialogue suffers from an excess of rhetoric and repetitions that add nothing. Fortunately, there are many other excellent scenes, inspired directorial choices and something cinematically interesting on screen all the time. Perhaps fearing theatricality, director Alonso Ruizpalacios seems to constantly remind us that we are watching a production of cinematic art. The cinematography uses black and white, with rare touches of color at key moments and towards the end – a device if not invented, then at least made famous by Steven Spielberg in “Schindler’s List”).
The combination of neorealism of attitude and diversity of cinematic means works very well
The scene at the heart of the film, which lasts about 15-20 minutes, is filmed in a single continuous shot and manages to convey the hellish dynamics of activity in the restaurant kitchen. Unlike many other films whose stories take place in the kitchen, in “La Cocina” the food preparation is not (with one exception) appetizing, and the screenwriter and director do not really care about it. We are not in a temple of gastronomy but in a rather expensive junk food factory. The atmosphere of confusion that is transmitted to the spectators is the one felt by the heroes of the film as immigrants confronted with American realities, hellish working conditions, language barriers and mentalities.