http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mubhqp-wf04

David Turnley’s powerful and moving documentary, Shenandoah, tells the story of a small, coal mining Pennsylvania town of that name in which an illegal Mexican immigrant was attacked and killed by a group of white teenagers in 2008. An exploration of the uneasy admixture of fear and hate with patriotism and group loyalty, the film provides a rich and textured understanding of the complicated attitudes to immigration in contemporary America. In one of those instances so typical of the history of American settlement, the community which has largely banded against the most recent immigrants is itself an immigrant town of an earlier era. Many of the inhabitants claim Irish, Polish or Lithuanian heritage. Their “Americanness” comes in their passion for football. The game is not only the center of the town’s social life, it functions as an ambivalent metaphor for its principles of inclusion and exclusion. The film repeatedly goes back and forth between these two thematic and spatial poles, empathetic but never strident, giving all the major actors a voice in the unfolding of the town’s tragedy.

The story centers around the star athlete, Brian Scully, one of the four assailants responsible for the death of Luis Ramirez whom Turnley interviews mostly in his room. A jock in his local high school, Scully is framed against his sports jerseys and trophies as he sits on his bed and talks about “the incident.” The film slowly fills in details of his young life: his doting mother and silently suffering father, his football coach, his teammates prior to the murder, and his efforts to move on with his life through participation in school musical theater and graduation ceremony. Scully’s emotional growth comes through recognition of the common humanity he shares with the deceased.

At the other end of this emotional and moral tug-of-war are the persons associated with Luis Ramirez, his fiancée Crystal and their small children, his cousin and friend, and his mother who lives in Mexico. Crystal’s determination to get justice for the victim goes a long way in getting her the help she needs to draw national attention to the tragedy, and to some degree of punishment for the perpetrators.

Alongside the light it shines on fear and hatred of the other, the film records the impact of economic decline on America’s industrial towns, where businesses have closed and buildings are being torn down. The people turn inward and find someone to blame for their plight. A familiar and oft-repeated story, but when all is said and done, there is no explaining what drives young people to brutality and violence against those that they perceive as different from themselves. So the film ends on a quietly optimistic note, hoping for a better tomorrow. But, as news from two days ago about an attack on a Sikh professor from Columbia University in New York City shows, such incidents are all too common. Ultimately, what is the most telling symptom of deep fractures in society is the “automatic” segregation along ethnic lines that one sees as a feature of most American cities and towns. Turnley’s ideal of diversity and progress may still be some time in coming.

The NY Times on Shenandoah: http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/10/after-a-new-immigrants-killing-conflict-in-a-coal-town/

Conversation on ‘Shenandoah’ with David Turnley