Roberto Minervini has garnered a reputation for his honest form of filmmaking, in which people essentially play themselves. In The Other Side, he focuses on Louisiana, where we get to know a group of people whose faces clearly depict a hard life. Their living conditions are in disarray; nothing is certain. In this film, some of the subjects are drug dealers and addicts, former army men; and even a militia group that hates the current federal government.
A glimpse into an impoverished area of Louisiana, The Other Side is raw, gripping, and moving. Most of the film focuses on a local drug dealer, Mark, and his girlfriend Lisa. We come to know them quite intimately, and at their most vulnerable… in good and bad times. In this part of Louisiana, drug use and drug dealing are parts of every day life. Other people include ‘Uncle Jim’, who is often stoned and drunk, an army vet who has clearly ‘paid his dues’. Most live in poverty and mostly rely on each other for survival. The people here are part of a system that appears to have forgotten them in some way.
As the film shifts focus to the militia group, the tone changes somewhat. This is a very diligent group of people, who clearly have more money to afford serious gun power and ammunition to train themselves for ‘the end of the world as we know it’. After all, this is “America… the land of the free”. These group of people clearly live in a world of their own. Racism is clearly in one’s face; another byproduct of their very specific lifestyle and culture. Their way of life is very insular, like the rest of the world does not seem to measure up in some way.
The Other Side is a gripping and hard look at the realities in the US today. Minervini allows the subjects of the film to honestly be themselves. What is the common thread for the people in the film is that they all feel the need to ‘protect themselves, their jobs, their lives, their families. They are all hoping to survive. The viewer may feel uncomfortable at times, but somehow Minervini and team show these individuals’ humanity. The film contains an intricate balance between reality with some fiction placed within it; a reality that may differ from one’s own but reality nonetheless. Minervini clearly respects his subjects and their world.
The Other Side, with introduction by director Roberto Minervini, screens at TIFF Bell Lightbox on June 10. The full retrospective The Other Side: The Films of Roberto Minervini runs from tomorrow June 10th until Sunday June 12th.
