La Cocina captures the experience of everyday New Yorkers deep within the alleyways of this bustling city. With Times Square on the lookout, La Cocina portrays the perfect example of the dramatic juxtaposition of the ‘American’ experience with other outside cultures. The Grill, as it is shown in the movie, appears to be an authentic Italian restaurant serving chicken marsala and a variety of pizzas. You can taste how David Нoltz, the restaurant owner, appears to blend into the workforce of Manhattan providing a heartwarming experience alongside workers working off-Broadway. The large capacity for people coming in and out seems to make the readers overlook the sheer humanity behind the ‘workers’, their life stories are what makes the experience truly unique.
“The Kitchen,” the other film directed by Alonzo Ruizpalacios, has a different flavor than other Mexican films, like ‘The Bear,’ which has recently become much more celebrated. The meticulous kitchen work, such as making a chicken marsala and cooking for the masses, is trivialized since that system revolves around being a part of it. In fact, people are hardly even considered in this sprawling, outmoded mechanism, instead being chewed out and disposed of so someone else can fill in the shoe.
To be more precise, while other shows and movies have captured the essence of chefs and other important figures in showcasing the art of cooking, what this movie depicts is decidedly more brutal. The film focuses on the harsh realities of the cooking world, which instead of an appreciation, often entails: a pang of hunger for maximum production, never-ending noise, and chaos alongside instability. It’s a cutthroat industry where only the most resilient of people could even fathom to exist. It isn’t a thriving environment, and the hazy overwhelming combination of myriad stimuli presents this all too well.
In this culinary warfare, Ruizpalacios first introduces us to the most basic archetype, the rookie. This rookie goes by the name of Estela (Anna Diaz), a fresh migrant from Mexico just trying to land a job. She gets her hands into someone else’s interview and then has to get the ball rolling. But “La Cocina” is not really her story. She is a fascinating character in that the camera continuously zooms in on her, appearing more tired and frustrated than before. In this case, she is an audience surrogate, a character who is thrown into the turmoil as we are.
La Cocina is all about Pedro (Raúl Briones), a master chef and an exquisite apocalypse. He is someone who has too many hours under his apron to debate with his superiors or kick the lobster into the haute cuisine circle. One can argue that this tactician has definitely earned his place. Instead, he runs this unit but is always on the brink of going out of control. Ruizpalacios adds an almost bitter fight from last night, the investigation into last night’s till theft, and his girlfriend Julia (Rooney Mara, excellent as always), a pregnant grill waitress considering an abortion, to the build-up of Pedro’s life due to collapse. Pedro and Julia are not introduced as any other characters but act as the main course for this narrative as La Cocina moves through them and around them.
Briones’ performance is phenomenal, to say the least. In “La Cocina” Briones performs intricately, taking on the role of Pedro and seamlessly weaving through the wires of a chaotic life. Having spent enough time in NYC kitchens, Pedro constantly puts up with negativity yet finds himself to be a beacon of hope. His leadership skills are remarkable, to say the least, he has to go through the hassle of being the backbone of employees who constantly get deported and fired, yet Pedro stays a clear outstanding leader. Ruizpalacios and his DP keep zooming out on Briones face understanding that it’s their best asset while capturing an amalgamating character and twirling through different scenes with ease. Briones reinterpretations of Pedro, who’s always panicking mentally but moves with the poise of an old-time movie star, always arrest Burji.
The movement of the camera in this shot makes “La Cocina” examine how to dominate scenery in a camera frame. The multi-act play is the best-suited definition, although the single location strongly suggests otherwise, the film makes it up with its sophisticated cinematographic queue which is a befitting style for a film wherein black and white couturier is used to create panic by means of various camera gimmicks. As the lunchtime rush approaches, spectators feel as if everyone is about to lose their place in the film, yet everything has been intricately planned out.
The last part of “La Cocina” is the moment I recall experiencing the strings of the film being pulled, or rather, one of the moments, and it happens to be the strongest monologue of the movie in that Briones breathtakingly delivers it. But it looks a bit showy considering that life in NYC kitchens does not normally culminate in very movie-memorable episodes. Still, it is also a movie that does not take sheer realism as the only approach all those jerky movements of the camera mentioned above are designed to put you in the right frame of mind. It captures the instances of weariness and drudgery of a typical act of cooking in a regular kitchen and the everyday beauty of it that comes with it. The number of kitchens for some like the Grills around Times Square and the surrounds would stun you. But Pedro, Julia, Estela, and the other employees may not be that particular or that exceptional. But the film elaborates on them so well.
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