Windows on the World

Starring: Ryan Guzman Edward, & James Edward Olmos

Screenplay written by Robert Mailer Anderson, Zack Anderson, Glynn Turman

Reviewed by Steve Halpern 

The other evening, just by accident viewed the film Windows on the World. This was a unique story about the aftermath of the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

The film is of a Mexican family affected by the destruction of the World Trade Center. Balthazar is the patriarch of this family. He worked carrying heavy loads of fish in Mexico. In order to improve the finances of his family, Balthazar traveled to the United States and eventually got a job in the kitchen of the restaurant the Windows on the World at the top of the World Trade Center. There is a moving scene at the beginning of the film where Balthazar says goodbye to his loving family knowing he will not be back for quite a while. 

Then, we see his family viewing a television broadcast of the destruction of the World Trade Center. Thinking about that scene, I thought about the news media coverage of the destruction of the World Trade Center. The media used those deaths and destruction as a pretext to go to war against the people of Afghanistan and Iraq.   

However, this Mexican family wasn’t thinking about any of that. All they thought of was the idea that they might have lost a loving husband and father. Eventually Balthazar’s son Fernando decides to go to New York City to see if he can find his father. 

To get to New York City, Fernando needed to travel in a crowded stifling hot van with others attempting to come to this country. Then he needed to walk across the desert.

Here we didn’t just see the difficulty of this arduous journey. We also see the solidarity of these immigrants. At one point, while Fernando and his friend were exhausted in the desert, they carried children on their shoulders.

Then, when they reached the United States, a farmer and his wife stopped their pickup truck to see who the immigrants were. The farmer took a shotgun from his truck. However, this family didn’t report the immigrants to the authorities. Instead, they gave the group a ride to the nearest town.

In New York City, Fernando saw many memorials to those who died in the World Trade Center. He faced vicious racists who had hostile attitudes towards Latinos who happened to be homeless. He also needed to be wary of the police who could have arrested and deported him.

One evening Fernando looked into an art gallery that was having an exhibition. A manager of the gallery saw Fernando, viewed him as a kind of curiosity, and invited him inside. In the gallery, Fernando saw the opulence of those living in New York City who were swimming in money. While dirking champagne, he viewed extravagantly priced artwork that portrayed street scenes of working-class neighborhoods. That evening Fernando slept in a cardboard box on the street.  

Then, Fernando began to work for a Nigerian named Lou (Glynn Turman) washing windows. Initially Fernando told Lou that he had no papers. Lou responded: “Welcome to the club.” Eventually Lou gave Fernando a place to stay, sleeping on the floor of his apartment. 

One of his Nigerian coworkers joked that their window-washing business had gone international. In another scene Lou talked about the injustices of this country. One of his co-workers from Nigeria responded: “Who do you think you are, Nelson Mandela?

Fernando started a relationship with a woman who was U.S. citizen. She was the manager of a store that sold memorial candles to families of those who had passed away.

Towards the end of the movie, Fernando was in a bar with his lover. An older man started singing the song New York, New York that had been made famous by Liza Minnelli and Frank Sinatra. In the past when I listened to this song, I thought of it as a tribute to the city. 

However, listening to this song in the context of the film, I thought of it differently. New York City is a place that mourned the horror of September 11. It is also the home of immigrants from all over the world who manage to make lives for themselves doing some of the worst jobs.

At the end of the film Fernando needs to decide if he will return to Mexico or stay in New York City. Clearly staying in the city would expose him to extremely difficult problems. We get the sense that he decided to stay in New York, but not just to send money home to his family. Now he found a place, that with all its difficulties, had become his home. 

I liked this film because it gives us a glimpse of the unvarnished reality in the world today.