Don't Let Me Drown
Don’t Let Me Drown
is a surprisingly good
little picture which is working on several levels at once and mostly doing
it extremely well.
It
works pretty well as a modern Romeo & Juliet-type love story. It
works very well as an inner city family drama. And it works excellently as
a look at New York trying to cope in the shadow of the World Trade Center
disaster.
Don’t Let Me Drown
is set in Brooklyn a mere
month after this historic disaster and this proximity to the complete horror
of the day gives all the parts of the movie surprising drama and gravity.
Now,
after a triumphant run of the festivals and a stint on HBO (sadly the film
never saw any kind of wide theatrical release) the movie is being offered on
video. Hopefully it will not escape the audiences’ attention yet again,
because it does deserve to be seen.
Don’t Let Me Drown
tells the story of two
families living in Brooklyn who were each affected by the disaster in
different ways. One is a Black-Dominican family which is struggling through
anger and pain after their oldest daughter is missing and presumed dead in
the building collapse. The other is a poor Mexican family who is struggling
to make ends meet as the father – a former janitor at the Centers – spends
his days and his health working to clean up the rubble and search for
bodies.
Granted, the World Trade Center sections are mostly in the background of the
story, but what happened on that day suffuses and steers most everything
which happens.
The
foreground of the story, sadly, is probably the least interesting – the
opposites-attract romantic connection between the youngest daughter of the
family in mourning and the son of the janitor who is hijacked by fate into
excavating for bodies. They have to hide their relationship from their
families due to prejudice and an insanely over-protective father.
The
two characters are both likable enough; however the Romeo & Juliet in
the big city scenario is one that has been played out dozens of times over
the decades since West Side Story. In fact, just a few months ago, I
saw nearly the exact same storyline in another small overlooked movie called
Homeland, though it was played out with
different ethnicities (Israeli and Palestinian there.) Drown is an
even better movie than the still quite good Homeland, but the
romantic subplot of the new film is not nearly as though-provoking as its
other sections.
The
family dramas have more meat to them. The boy’s family is barely making
ends meet as his father is nearly killing himself working – and his mother
is constantly striving for ways to stretch a buck. The girl’s family is
struggling through the trauma of the lost sister – mom and dad can barely
speak civilly to each other and the dad has become incredibly
over-protective of his remaining daughter.
However, it is the World Trade Center segments which really pack a wallop.
Whether it is the janitor father having violent coughing fits after long
days spent in the excavation site or a quiet scene of the mother and father
tearfully watching an old video of their late daughter’s college graduation,
the events of September 11, 2001 cast a tragic pall over everything which
happens in these people’s lives.
All
of this is done with an almost completely unknown cast. The two leads are
doing their first starring roles in film and only Gina Torres of Huge
and Ricardo Chavira of Desperate Housewives are likely to be well
known amongst viewers – and they are in supporting roles – important
supporting roles, but supporting roles nonetheless.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2010 PopEntertainment.com.
All rights reserved. Posted: October 13, 2010.
