Chop Shop is a movie that takes several roads less traveled. It’s set in New York City, but on the outskirts of Queens among a network of factories and gnarled roads rather than in glittering Manhatten. It is about children, but Chop Shop’s 11 year-old Alejandro is a far cry from the plucky street urchins of Oliver! and Slumdog Millionaire. Ale is a tough customer, a prematurely mature survivor who works long days to support himself while the kids across the bridge go to school. The movie is about the impoverished, but it neither demonizes nor deifies them. Chop Shop is a bug’s eye view of American life, and it sees it with a tender eye for detail.
The story begins as Ale meets his 16-year-old sister Isamar at a train station. They appear not to have seen each other for a while. We don’t know where she’s been or why she’s back, nor do we know where their parents are. We can assume that their lives up to this point haven’t been easy, but the details aren’t very important and the movie has more pressing things to address. What is immediately apparent is that the two have a very warm rapport borne out of a long relationship. Ale is the dominant personality. He gets Isamar a job as a short-order cook and finds her a place to sleep: with him in the room above the titular garage where he works one of his many jobs. Isamar approaches this new life reluctantly; she’s been disappointed before, we sense. Meanwhile, always-active Ale assures her that the job is good, the room is big, and that soon the two of them will be making money hand over fist. A pattern emerges.
The movie is not plotted like most movies. It has an arc, but not one built out of an increasingly tense and meaningful series of scenes. The bulk of Chop Shop is made up of little moments, things which give us insight into the lives of these people and the dreams they must bury to live them. There is a shot of Ale waxing a car while a more seasoned garage worker guides his hands. In another shot, Ale and his friend chuck a few rocks in the city sun. Director Ramin Bahrani is adept at suggesting the plights and thoughts of his characters in simple, effective ways. In one memorable shot, Ale climbs onto a squat rooftop after a hard night’s work and pauses to look at Shea Stadium, aglow in floodlights, towering in the distance. The crowd cheers, and we know everything Ale is thinking.
This economical filmmaking serves the movie well. As could be expected, Bahrani shoots this material in a rough, kinetic manner. There are a lot of hand-held shots and simple set-ups. In terms of style, the movie has been likened to Italian neo-realist films of the 1950s, but that comparison does the movie a disservice by aggrandizing it. The movie shows exactly what it needs to show to get its point across; it is clean, direct, unobtrusive. Any comparisons that can be made to other films are incidental; the movie is just itself. In an attempt to keep things as grounded in reality as possible, Bahrani uses non-actors for pretty much all of both the major and minor roles. The movie is a slice of life in the truest sense of the phrase.
At eighty-four minutes, Chop Shop is a quick ride, but is no longer than it needs to be. It’s refreshing to see a movie about poverty and the impoverished that has no particular axe to grind. Ale and Isamar work very hard, all day and every day. They have fun, they dream, and we get to see them do it for a little while. They’ll keep at it after we’ve left.
