La Bamba

For the month of November, I was going back and forth on what I would review. However, now I have decided that I will review every movie that had the great Lou Diamond Phillips. I will start with the 1987 classic that I saw in Spanish Class in High School, “La Bamba.”

The movie starts with a scene that first looks like a flashback. Some teenage boys are playing basketball on school grounds. Way over their heads, a light plane flies over them. The colors of this scene are faded, like an old memory, and the voices sound like they are in a distance. There is slow motion. Another plane shows up. The basketball game continues. We get the feeling that this is a slow summer afternoon. Suddenly, the two planes crash into one another and fall on the school grounds below.

Because “La Bamba” is the story of Ritchie Valens, we think this is his flashback. However, he was not there when the planes fell, and the scene appears to be how he might have thought it went. One of his friends was killed that day. He always believed that if he had been on the school grounds, he also would have been killed. That was why he never liked to fly on planes.

The scene itself is very powerful. Roger Ebert said in his review, “But I wonder if it is the right way to open "La Bamba."” Everyone who watches this movie will know that Valens died in an airplane crash with Buddy Holly (Marshall Crenshaw) and the Big Bopper (Stephen Lee) on February 3, 1959, the day the music died. Ebert said, “The opening scene is followed by several other references to Valens' fear of flying, and the effect is to put the whole movie under a cloud, to weigh down every scene with the knowledge of impending death.”

Ebert continued, “That robs "La Bamba" of a quality I think it could use: the sense of fun.” This is a sincere, well-acted movie about the short life of a small rock ‘n’ roll singer, and by the time it’s over we almost have the feeling Valens would have been surprised not to have died in a plane accident.

He is played by Lou Diamond Phillips as a serious, thoughtful, strongly focused young man who wanted to play his music more than anything else in life. His dedication almost goes to an obsession. He never seems to really let go.

Valens only had three famous songs. His public career lasted less than six months. He died before he turned 18. There isn’t a lot of information to draw from as there was for “The Buddy Holly Story.” So, the director, Louis Valdez, tells the story with information about Valens’ family, especially his hard-working, happy mother (Rosana De Soto) and his half-brother (Esai Morales), who both supports him and dislikes him.

Valens’ real last name was Valenzuela. He was a Mexican-American, raised for a time in refugee labor camps, and he idolized the older brother who would show up from time to time on a stylish motorcycle. However, he loved music more and began to sing wherever he could find work in Los Angeles in the late 1950s. His family moved to town and Valens got a girlfriend – a blond Anglo named Donna (Danielle von Zerneck), whose parents didn’t like him – inspiring Donna, one of his famous songs.

He had some of the normal journeys growing up, and the movie tells a lot of a trip he and his brother took to Tijuana, where Valens was less interested in girls than in a band (in the movie it is, of course, playing La Bamba).

Once Valens is seen by a small record producer, played by Joe Pantoliano, his career surprisingly rises. He records a song, it is a hit, he is invited by Alan Freed, played by Jeffrey Alan Chandler, to show up at one of his original rock ‘n’ roll stage shows in Brooklyn and two other hits follow relatively fast. Valens made one important artistic decision: Despite that he didn’t speak Spanish, he insisted on recording La Bamba in Spanish, using the overwhelming logic that if Nat King Cole could record in Spanish, he also could.

Valens’ last tour is handled in an almost obligatory way. We know how the movie will end, however. The Big Bopper comes backstage, saying “Hello, baby!” to everyone he meets. Buddy Holly sings Crying, Waiting, Hoping. They go to the airport in a snowstorm, Holly flips a coin and Valens calls heads and wins his place on the fated plane. Inevitably, still to come is a movie about the Big Bopper, which will be called “Rock ‘n’ Roll Pilot!” (“He Was at the Controls the Day the Music Died!”).

This is a good small movie, sweet and sentimental, about a kid who never really got a chance to show his talent. The best things in it are the most surprising parts: the look of everyday life, or a loving mother, of a brother who loves and hates him, of a kid growing up and getting famous and leaving everyone standing around at his funeral surprised that his life ended just as it looked like it was starting.

Undeniably, this is a powerful movie that will stay with you after you watch it. After seeing this in Spanish Class, I never forgot this movie. I’m glad I saw it there because I really liked the movie, but I was sad by the end. I didn’t know about Ritchie Valens, but after seeing this movie, now I am familiar with him, even though I don’t know his entire life story. Still, if you can, watch this movie because you will love it. Especially if you like listening to La Bamba, I would recommend this.

Sorry for posting this late. I was going to start, but my computer had a little difficulty. Now look out next week when I look at another powerful movie in “Lou Diamond Phillips Month.”