White Trash/La Joven

I watched Luis Bunuel's White Trash this afternoon, and I thought it was a marvelous movie. It has an alternate title, "La Joven," which means "the young girl" in Italian.  The film is set on a beautiful coastal game preserve, and in the opening scene we are introduced to Traver, who we learn via flashback is a jazz clarinetist accused of raping a woman in the nearest mainland town.  Bruised from fleeing across the waters in a johnboat, Traver quickly learns that he is not alone on this island. Miller, the stoic and rugged game warden, is hunting rabbit in a nearby thicket. The camera then follows the brute back to his shanty lodge where we meet "la joven," a young nymphet named Evie. In a series of believable but coincidental events, we learn that Evie's grandfather and fellow warden, Pee Wee, has passed away the night before in the shanty next to Miller's. Pee Wee had been caring for his granddaughter. Before Miller can decide what to do with Evie, she emerges cleaned and groomed at dinner. The unkempt child is revealed as a beautiful young girl. Miller, isolated from humanity, is reluctantly smitten. He makes a thwarted advance on the girl, no more than 13 or 14.

When Miller goes in to town the next day, Traver emerges to steal food and supplies to repair his weary vessel. He and Evie form an immediate bond. She is intrigued by his skin color but disarmed by his gentle nature and generosity (he gives her $20 for a shotgun and gasoline). When Miller returns to find his shotgun and gasoline gone, a manhunt ensues. This is where the plot thickens. Miller believes he kills Traver, and the disgruntled fugitive, very much alive, returns to the lodge to take his revenge. But he does not... there is something about the hostility and hatred that Miller directs towards the unwelcomed guest that elicits pity in Traver. This begins a fascinating exchange in which Traver explains that Miller, a white trash alien, is no better than a black man. And after taking both of the warden's guns, Traver is the man in power. They eventually decide after a tortured existence of a daylong stand off that it serves everyone well for Traver to be on his way off the island. But a storm strikes in the night... in many ways. Miller is consumed by his desire and, as Traver sleeps in the next cabin, forces himself on Evie. Somehow in this storm a local minister and boat captain that Miller has sought out in town the day before manage to arrive on the island to collect Evie. When they arrive, the captain has news of a black rapist on the loose. Traver has anticipated this unwelcome revelation and flees before Miller realizes the accusation’s significance. Another manhunt ensues, while Miller warns Evie that she must not speak a word of her newfound womanhood.  But when pressed by the Reverend about her time on the island, she slips up and reveals Miller's sin. This is where the story adds a layer. Up until this point it is a story about relationships and power. Miller over Evie. Miller vs. Traver. Traver over Miller. But the Reverend's arrival adds an element of religion. It is no longer a race or power issue but a matter of good and evil. How do these men know the accusation of rape to be true? How can one man, a pedophile, pursue another man in the name of morality?

When Miller and the Boat Captain capture a wounded Traver, it takes Evie's bravery to save him from a certain lynching. Then, and this is perhaps the movie's greatest flaw and yet perhaps its most brilliant moment: In order to save himself from persecution at the hands of the law, Miller agrees to let Traver go to save himself from condemnation. The reverend chooses, what he feels, is the lesser of two evils. It isn't exactly a trade, but the way the exchange between the Reverend and Miller goes, this is what it boils down to. The reverend even leaves the possibility of marriage between the wayward warden and la joven. The boat captain, who has expressed his own hatred and contempt for blacks, will not let this fly. He chases down Traver as he makes for his boat and a brawl ensues. In the end, Traver wields a knife that could kill the Captain, but he lets him flee in shame. The final scene jumps from Evie and the Reverend escaping the island on the boat to Miller aiding Traver in pushing his boat off of the shore.  I know this is a lot to take in, but I am fascinated by the plot, the symbolism, and the implications for race relations. For the first time in any of our films, the rationalization of racism is confronted with a Christian criticism. A remarkable web of power exchanges between pedophile, black man, child, and spiritual leader mark a story layered in symbolism and sin.  In an interview about his very Southern film, Italian director Luis Bunuel remarked that he wanted to make a movie that showed the compromises of power-- Bunuel poses a question about the end of the film: does spiritual compromise and the implication of power as a human tool leave us thinking about race? He's right to ask. At the film's end I was not thinking about race, but about evil and goodness and sin and justice.  These are spiritual and philosophical issues, but most importantly, human issues. The audience becomes colorblind in the end without even realizing it-- we witness the motivations and emotions of each character as a human being-- not as a child or a black man or a minister. Very powerful.