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The Kindness of Strangers
David B. Green
 ADRIANA CHIESA ENTERPRISES |
Inside a bank, a hand holding a wide brush whitewashes the glass of the locked front door. Outside, beyond a metal grating, a frenzied crowd jostles in vain hope of being admitted to the building. A financial institution has failed in the Far East, causing a ripple of financial disasters internationally, including the closure of this bank in Buenos Aires. Two of those outside are Santamar�a, a soon-to-be-former employee of the bank, whose wife also throws him out when she hears the news, and Ariel Goldstein, whose family�s savings go up in smoke.
Santamar�a (Enrique Pi�eyro) is left with nothing, and ends up combing the streets of the Argentinian capital, picking up the wallets and documents left behind in garbage cans by purse-snatchers, and returning them to their rightful owners, hopefully for a small reward.
Ariel (Daniel Hend-ler), in his early 20s, has the option of working in his family�s Jewish res-taurant, but takes a night job as an editor at a cable network. (He also makes bar mitzvah and wedding videos.) In a rare moment of candor with his Jewish girlfriend, Estela, he mocks what he sees as the "package": He feels that he�s expected to enter the family business, marry Estela, have three or four kids. She doesn�t see what the problem is. The "package" is precisely what she wants from life.
Ariel is searching for something else -- he just doesn�t know what. At his night job, he meets Laura, a bisexual filmmaker, who too is looking to fix the hole left by a lifetime of denied love from her father. In the meantime, Santamar�a has taken up with Elsa (veteran Italian star Stefania Sandrelli), who lives off the tips she earns from maintaining the restroom at a local train station. Now that the railroad has been privatized, trains pass through without stopping. Elsa�s husband is in prison far away, and when Santamar�a shows up, she welcomes and returns the attention he showers on her. Santamar�a and Ariel meet, and when the latter tells Laura about his new acquaintance�s unique Third World profession, she decides they must make a film about him.
Thus the various plots of Daniel Burman�s "Waiting for the Messiah" overlap and intertwine. The Argentinian director and screenwriter is only 28, but this, his second feature, has the polish, wit and attention to detail one would expect from a filmmaker twice his age. (Ariel�s boss, for example, insists that all employees use their initials rather than names. He also gives his new ward unsolicited advice for conquering women, but turns out to belong to an Internet chat group for lonely people, and invites Ariel along to a first get-together of the group on Christmas Eve.)
Burman�s Buenos Aires is cold and cruel, reflecting Argentina�s serious economic depression, with the deafening roar of passing traffic never far away. Its residents can only hope for moments of kindness and warmth from the characters who enter and leave their lives. Or as Burman himself told The Report, "By the end of the movie, Ariel realizes that messiahs don�t exist, or that the messiah is just anyone who will give you five minutes of his time."
One shouldn�t conclude from this that "Waiting for the Messiah" is all bleak. They may be holding on for dear life, but all Burman�s characters find love in one form or another. Estela (deliciously played by Melina Petriella) moves into the Goldstein restaurant after Ariel�s mother dies, buys a karaoke player and installs a styrofoam model of the Western Wall, between whose stones guests are invited to slip their wishes. She also leads a children�s choir at the local JCC, and a scene of their rehearsal, with closeups of the fresh, freckled faces of the singing children, combined with long shots that show Estela from the rear swaying sexily to the music as Ariel observes from the back of the sanctuary, is a gem.
Ariel grows increasingly distant from her, but she waits for him patiently. Burman describes this as "her strategy, a very Jewish one."
Burman spoke by phone from Ushuaia, in Argentina�s Tierra del Fuego territory, the southernmost city on the planet, where he is shooting a new feature, "All Flight Attendants Go to Heaven." He describes it as "a comedy about pain, a love story about a young widower who meets a pregnant flight attendant. They meet by chance, at the end of the world, where they�ve each come to commit suicide -- and their love is born."
The film, he says, echoing his words about "Waiting for the Messiah," is about love "as a contract between two people who understand it as a tool to overcome pain."
Burman, who received funding for both "Messiah" and the new film from the Sundance Institute (founded by Robert Redford to support independent film), affects a cynical attitude about life and love. But no one who has seen "Waiting for the Messiah" could believe that his approach to existence is really so utilitarian. He has created characters with passion and compassion. Redemption may not come from the messiah, but human kindness often does the trick.
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