William Wordsworth
Wordsworth decried “getting and spending,” calling it “a sordid boon” that lays waste to our self and clouds our wonder of the physical world. “We have given our hearts away” he complains in “The World Is Too Much with Us.”
I memorized that poem in college. And I still find more encouragement in that English Romantic’s bleak sonnet than in the dark comedy I saw last weekend that traipses across similar anti-materialism terrain.
As the credits rolled up at the end of Beatriz at Dinner, I didn’t know whether to run or reach for a razor blade. “Critical praise = a depressing movie,” I once declared. Well this riff on healing vs. destroying called Beatriz at Dinner has been heaped with critical praise. Quick, pass the critics their Prozac.
Led by Salma Hayek, Connie Britton and John Lithgow, the cast is admittedly praiseworthy. Even the minor characters are uniformly excellent although I do tire of the trope of the ethically challenged attorney that always predictably pops up in tales of depraved material excess. This time, the lawyer is Alex played by Jay Duplass who finagles a real estate deal for mega-rich property developer Doug Strutt played by the uber-talented Lithgow.
But the good gal vs. bad guys story with Hayek as the Mexican immigrant and empathetic earth mother massage-therapy-healing Beatriz — contradictorily massages the message right out of you. I doubt that’s what the writer or the director intended.
Indeed, I think Beatriz at Dinner is meant as a sociopolitical commentary on class division and healing not hurting. One commentator even sees it as a take on innocuous questions that he calls a “gateway to casual racism.” While that commentator makes some telling points about hypocrisy, false perceptions, and how “wealth and status don’t overpower racial discrimination,” he’s too overwrought for my taste. See “Why Dark Comedy ‘Beatriz at Dinner’ Is So Cathartic for POC Audiences.” [To my insurance defense lawyers, POC here does not mean proof of claim but people of color. Who knew?]
Years ago, I had a guy try to hand me the keys to his Beemer in front of a tony Ritz-Carlton. Had I not been running late to a meeting in the hotel, I might have simply said thanks and left him with his mouth open when instead of parking the sports car like he mistakenly assumed, I’d have peeled rubber down the Coast Highway on a fast spin. And besides, these days who really thinks wealth and status don’t overpower grace and manners? Money still doesn’t buy class.
No spoiler alert necessary here. But I disagree further with the aforementioned commentator who additionally opines that the film indicts “white supremacy.” At the same time, he also asserts that this implausible sapo-de-otro-pozo [frog from the other well] story is “empowering.” It’s empowering alright — but only if by that you 
mean knowing how your story is going to end.
This weekend, on the other hand, I saw The Big Sick. It’s also a film about cultural differences. It relates the real life courtship of Kumail Nanjiani and his now-wife, Emily Gordon. But by contrast to Beatriz, it’s indeed a comedy. It’s full of pathos, humor, and romance. There’s terrific acting, too, by Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan and the actress that never disappoints, the inimitable Holly Hunter.
And no lawyers or the profession’s reputation were harmed in the making of this movie. In fact, there are no lawyers in it.
The movie is fun, funny and in point of fact empowering of the spirit. Moreover, unlike Beatriz at Dinner, you feel good walking out of the cineplex.
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Credits: William Wordsworth, public domain, at Wikimedia Commons; Beatriz at Dinner poster, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53897899; Montclair Film by “Amy Gallatin / Montclair Film” at Flickr Creative Commons Attribution; Swallowed in the Sea, by KellyB at Flickr Creative Commons Attribution; The Big Sick, By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53943370
