Playing with the artist's fire.

Review: Carlos Almaraz: Playing With Fire. 

Michael Sedano

"I live in Frogtown," the freshman woman said in her introductory impromptu speech on the first day of class. I sat up and looked around. I was the only surprised one in the classroom of locals at Cal State El Sereno. I was from out of town and didn’t know about Frogtown. I didn’t know about Chicano Art, either. 

The shy young woman expressed herself effectively, especially because her topic was “chicano art” and I learned everything I knew about Chicano Art in 1975 from that talk. Maybe 1976. After class, the speaker asked if she could introduce the class to her informant, a Chicano artist. I didn’t catch the name.

 

On special guest speaker day--hell with the syllabus, que no?—her friend, a plaid-shirted, bearded painter, used the chalk tray to display some of his canvases and explain the questions he had about “chicano” in art. He wasn’t going to offer a definitive answer, but dang, I looked at that man’s work and instantly learned what Chicano Art looks like. In a Platonic world, Carlos Almaraz’ paintings of dogs and cars and echo park are the Ideal every other work of Chicana Chicano Arte gets held up against to appreciate. 

 

I’m making up the part that guest speaker was Carlos Almaraz. But I suffer from Anomia and the painter’s name slipped away the moment I shook his hand white man style. My eyes, though, remember. I see those canvases, I know that painter’s name is Carlos Almaraz. I also remember a thousand dollars stood irremediably between me and owning one of those canvases so beautifully displayed in Director Elsa Flores Almaraz and Richard J Montoya’s biography, Carlos Almaraz: Playing with Fire.

 

The Netflix program means if you have the money you’ll never be limited to remembering. The production lavishes light and special effects upon an encyclopedic exhibition-on-video whose merits far outweigh its single defect. Carlos Almaraz: Playing with Fire, becomes arguably perfect owing to that defect.

 

Netflix enormous cafeteria of video offerings makes finding this film a chore. It deserves to be splashed across the virtual front page of any Netflix message. Gente need to see this life. People who love life need to see this film. Per Netflix, people who watch Documentaries, Social & Cultural Documentaries, LGBTQ Documentaries, will seek out this work. Raza, for absochingaolutely sure, check it out. Órale.

 

Olmos and Montoya sound good reading the writer’s beautifully constructed sentences so packed with usefulness that I want subtitles. I want to see the words and hear them. Some of this already is built into the work as Zach De La Rocha reads from Almaraz’ own writing as the camera moves down canvas or page where the artist leaves his thoughts. You expect professional work from professionals, so these performances from De La Rocha along with Edward James Olmos and Richard Montoya are not what make Carlos Almaraz: Playing with Fire a must-see.

 

Almaraz, with Magu, Frank Romero, and Beto De La Rocha, started Chicana Chicano Arte on its trajectory into the Unitedstatesian and global art world. I say “chicana” to emphasize Judithe Hernández is the fifth member of Los Four. The film isn’t about that, but gente let’s be clear. 

 

It’s an incredibly personal film to viewers who lived in Los Angeles during the post-movimiento years. I remember students at Cal State Los Angeles telling me, their professor, excitedly about going to see Magu. Magu explained it all. 

 

Footage of Magu captures the seminal artist’s insight and good nature when Magu explains Chicanos are different from Mexicanos, for example, “we ate Kix cereal and drove Chevys, gringo cars.” For me, I was enchanted hearing Los Perros in the farmworker segment. Those guys were so skilled they needed to be discovered along with their contemporaries, Los Lobos.

 

Music by two members of Los Lobos gives the film a distinctive energy familiar to listeners. Yet, the most telling musical moment comes from Verdi, when the biography turns to the artist’s alcoholism and self-destructive existence. Frank Romero remembers Carlos was living with two men. Almaraz resided in a section of New York city where opera singers lived. The music is “Labiamo,” a famous operatic drinking song. It’s subtle and a nice touch of joyous doom. Another órale just for that one.

 

Critics interviewed in the film, including fellow artists and friends of Carlos Almaraz, quickly name Monet, Renoir, Degas, as Almaraz equals. Collectors and gallerists emphasize Carlos Almaraz’ originality, passion, all-consuming intensity. The Directors set out to prove the critics right, to show how the artist translates and lays those emotions onto painted canvas. This film gets it done. Carlos Almaraz: Playing with Fire is a fulfilling account of a life lived well beyond the verge.

 

About that defect.

 

I suppose some film school student will pick at a nit here and there—an awkward dissolve like the Disney to Warhol face that makes you squint;  another that calls attention to itself with a “wow, this is Film,” a take too short here, a take way too long there, bad cuts. Is that lengthy sunset take saying we’re near the end of this film? Montoya fights off low energy and slowing down the film writing skillfully of the artist’s lustful behaviors that left his friends shaking their heads. “You’re doing what?”

 

Animating Almaraz paintings turns them into pastiches of themselves. The film is a tribute to Carlos Almaraz and his work, but some of these are no longer Almaraz’ work.

 

Early on in the film the Directors decide they need to improve Almaraz’ finished work. They do cute tricks like giving Mao a heart and have him wink at you. The flip books, of course, must be flipped.

 

For “Magic Green Stage” these Directors animate each figure in the painting. Almaraz’ original composition lacks a rabbit. To correct Almaraz’ mistake, the Directors add their own rabbit. Then they have their rabbit leap through the ring the Yaqui deer dancer holds. What the heck?

 

These effects are, like the opening Titles, visually wonderful. Echo Park water shimmers in the starry night, flames shoot out and disappear into the air, surfaces glow with translucence. But none of that exists in the real work. The artist did not install those features. What he said is all he said.

I hear all these special effects are really expensive. Good to have deep pockets producers, but why do it at all?

 

“Carlos feeds our soul,” a critic says in the opening minutes to set the mood for the next hour and twenty minutes. “Beauty in every stroke” says another. “Like he paints with butter,” the extreme close-up sums it up, pans ocean waves of color and brush strokes and thickness. In a hundred years, this twelve-foot painting will be the only evidence burrito stands ever existed and were real, the artist says. Truth is important to this artist and he invests every work with that value. The animated special effects aren’t true.

I suspect there was enormous debate around the table on these changes to the artist’s work. We’re talking deficit-difference in these decisions. The Directors argue, via structure, the boy Carlos Almaraz grew up fascinated with animation. In a clip, Almaraz says he wonders how you make images move, make them evolve, create emotion in people? Animation would have been something Carlos himself would do, were he living in LA with today’s media, instead of 1969 when the artist returned from the NYC scene and a mental hospital. If he coulda he woulda.

 

I believe he coulda and woulda, too.  He didn't. That guy up in front of Speech 101 was a genius, I saw it in his work, I heard it in his clear voice, I understood what he was saying. And viewers see on screen and hear in this script that genius. The Directors didn't correct the artist’s voice, they let the words speak for themselves, al menos. You hear genius in this artist's words when he says fuck quality, it’s quantity, make art affordable to all. 

 

Carlos Almaraz: Playing with Fire makes one of the United States’ most capable artists free to view at your convenience, with a subscription to Netflix. Sabes, this isn’t entirely Almaraz’ arte up there on screen, just as it's not free, but close enough. It’s not government work, it’s arte, Film. Carlos Almaraz: Playing with Fire is cultura for all to see.