Last Updated on January 6, 2021 by themigrationnews
The originally titled movie La Jaula de Oro popularly known as Golden Dream explains the dreams of millions who cross the border in hope of living a better life. The director Diego Quemada-Díez through his piece of art tries to carve stories of immigrants from Latin America. The film shows the journey of young irregular migrants and the trouble it takes to reach the country of destination. In this case travelling up through Mexico and illegally crossing the border into the US. Golden Dream successfully aces that a person could go to any end to change its living conditions. Diego’s film isn’t just realistic, it is an overlap of truth and make-believe that is a resemblance to what is happening in our times. The movie symbolizes the snow as hope and key to new life. The movie evinced the usual mixture of empathy and reality.
The opening scene itself establishes poverty and violence, which is one of the major drivers of the migration. The movie in the opening shorts exhibits slums, small tin houses, tiny lanes, men in military uniform, and children playing with guns. The movie takes you to different locations from Guatemala to the wilderness of Mexico. It greets viaduct-spanned green mountains of Guatemala and southern Mexico. The movie basically reflects the journey of the three youngsters migrating from the origin country to the country of destination. The journey is a new life itself before starting one after reaching the destination country. Director has rightly emplaced the rawness of relationships through the emotions such as aggression, little laughs and jealousy.
The plot starts with the lead character aggressively walking through lanes of slums and ends up looking at the snowfall. The movie over the time tweaks the feeling of helplessness, sadness and loneliness. The film revolves around Juan (Brandon López), Chauk (Rodolfo Domínguez), Samuel (Carlos Chajon) and Sara (Karen Pineda). Juan and Samuel are rag pickers. Juan is smart and also a self-proclaimed leader of his fellow migrants, whereas his friend Samuel is a fainthearted lad. Sara, the only female migrant, accompanies them as a male so that she is not exploited over the journey for being a woman. The three decide to go north to live a new life. Chauk, an Indiana boy, joins them halfway to Mexico. The conflict arises on their journey when they are detained by border police. They all face different hurdles to cross the border. The migrants losing their lives during transition have always made it to the news, the movie rightly analyzes this at individual level.
The director is depicting the story of four teenagers but representing the plight of millions of undocumented migrants. Some among them lose their lives and few make it to the other side. There are shots where faces of people travelling along with lead characters are captured on a train. Along with direction, cinematography is to be appreciated as shots have spoken well where dialogues couldn’t. There is a scene which captures a tunnel becoming smaller and smaller, then vanishes and the next minute flash light of the train appears. It seems the director has used this as an analogy to the concept of darkness and hope.
The movie in between shows the mutual companionship developed among the teenage migrants.Movie is relatively slow but it hooks you up with the journey and the hurdles faced by these teenagers. The movie is suspense driven and lined-up with unexpected events that makes the viewer sit on edge. The actors have rightly captured the seriousness of the subject which is reflected through their performances.
The last scene might make viewers shed tears as it leaves some kind of sadness. The golden dream has come true but yet something is missing. Juan, who migrates to end his tiresome life of rag picker, lands up with a job of collecting leftover meat in a factory. “Golden dream” ends up devastated, obliterated and worthless.
-Snehal Mutha
Snehal is a Pune based journalist doing her little and loves to read books, finds her peace in food. Her areas of interest are gender studies, international migration and social issues. She wants to be a pantomath who loves to explore and travel the world. She loves to express herself in the form of creative writing and digital art.