SAVING GRACE

With few exceptions, Hollywood's portrayal of those involved in the
manufacture, transport, sale, and use of drugs has, like the drug policies
of the U.S. government, always been rooted in fear and violence. From the
cartoonish chaos of the 1930s government propaganda film Reefer Madness to
the brutal account of a Cuban-American drug kingpin in 1983's Scarface, the
depiction of the drug-involved as antagonist has been paramount to
filmmakers' vision.

This approach was no doubt an effort to ride prevailing political winds
that deem the drug war to be good and necessary. Toeing the government line
has allowed filmmakers to avoid revealing the humanity of their subjects,
lest a breath of truth threaten the house of cards that is the drug war.

Drugs first mainstreamed into theaters in the 1970s. Directors of the time
portrayed heroin or cocaine trafficking in dramatic films by showing the
gritty (mainly New York City) cop fighting against corrupt colleagues and
drug dealers. These movies often starred revered actors like Al Pacino
(Serpico) and Gene Hackman (The French Connection). A noted exception from
the period, in that it was devoid of star talent and took place abroad, was
Midnight Express (1978), a bleak tale of an American smuggler imprisoned in
Turkey.

In the 1980s (and continuing into the '90s) action movies celebrated the
vengeful American agent of drug interdiction. The above-the-law narcs of
the time were played by rugged acting lightweights in tight jeans like
Stephen Seagal (Out for Justice) and Chuck Norris (Lone Wolf McQuade).

At the same time, American television celebrated a love affair with the
ass-kicking narcotics officer in such popular television shows as Miami
Vice and Norris's abhorrent Walker, Texas Ranger. With Cops - featuring an
endless stream of handcuffed drug suspects of color - early "reality"
television also got into the game.

Sympathetic portrayals of those even loosely associated with the drug trade
were few and far between. The seeds of the drug comedy were planted in
1969's Easy Rider and first bore fruit as a genre in 1978's Cheech and
Chong vehicle Up in Smoke and later in 1986's Fast Times at Ridgemont High
(and continuing in clunkers like 1993's Dazed and Confused). In the 90s,
some filmmakers returned to and attempted to outdo the gritty 1970s
leitmotif, notably 1991's Rush and 1996's gruesome Trainspotting, based on
the Irvine Welsh novel.

As the drug war continued to escalate under President Clinton, notably with
the advent of Plan Colombia, a new filmmaking tack emerged in 2000 with the
arrival of Traffic.

Steven Soderbergh's multilayered reproach of the drug war was the most
complete look to date at the horrible consequences of U.S. drug policy.
Critics hailed Traffic as the first U.S. film to portray buyers and sellers
on both sides of the U.S. border as victims of the drug war. The film,
stocked with A-list stars and featuring surprising cameos from Republican
Sen. Orrin Hatch, liberal pundit Michael Kinsley, and others, served to
bring the drug war debate out of the political ethos and into the world of
pop culture. The success of the film in turn fueled political debate around
the drug war.

A year after Traffic came Blow, a compassionate portrayal of a cocaine
kingpin, based on the life of imprisoned American trafficker George Jung.

Clearly, Hollywood's depiction of those involved with illegal drugs had,
like the millennium, turned a corner.

The newest and perhaps most eloquent and personal entry to the drug-policy
genre is Maria Full of Grace, a remarkable debut feature by New York
writer/director Joshua Marston. The acclaimed film, which earned awards
this year at Sundance and festivals in Berlin, Los Angeles, Cartagea,
Seattle, and Newport, opens today in Los Angeles and New York and goes into
wider release next week.

Maria Full of Grace tells the story of Maria Alvarez, a pregnant
17-year-old Colombian who smuggles heroin into the U.S. in the form of 62
pellets she swallows before the long flight to New York - where her payoff
awaits.

The protagonist is played with extraordinary poise and appeal by the
beautiful Catalina Sandino Moreno, a Colombian now living in New York.

Maria's struggle first to swallow the heroin-filled latex pellets and,
later, her solution to having failed to keep them in her system is, though
filmed with restraint by the skilled hand of Marston, nevertheless ghastly
enough to activate filmgoers' gag reflexes.

But these and other uncomfortable moments are essential to showing
moviegoers the strength and courage of Maria and the thousands of real-life
women just like her.

"My goal was to put a sympathetic face on victims of the 'war on drugs,'"
Marston said Wednesday night via phone from a taxi in Miami, where he had
just arrived for the movie's local premiere. "Instead of the usual drug war
movie that tells a story from the top down - from the perspective of a DEA
agent, for example - with Maria, I chose to tell a story from the bottom up."

While the plot brings the preternaturally resourceful Maria from rural
Colombia to Bogota and then New York City, the movie never strays from the
director's vision to show the effects of the U.S. government's drug war on
regular Colombians.

Plan Colombia, implemented by President Clinton (it was written by Rand
Beers, now a senior advisor to Democratic presidential candidate John
Kerry) and escalated under President Bush, pumps billions of U.S. taxpayer
dollars into a failed campaign of military aid, drug interdiction, and crop
eradication that leads to the death and displacement of Colombia's most
vulnerable - farmers, peasants, ethnic minorities, women and children -
while fueling environmental degradation and the country's long-simmering
civil war.

"It's an invasive policy," says Marston. "Instead of providing military
advisors, helicopters, and fumigation, Plan Colombia should be about
providing economic and humanitarian aid."

In spite of the staggering sums spent by the U.S. government to stem the
flow of illegal drugs like heroin and cocaine from the world's leading
source (Colombia) to its leading consumer (the United States), Marston
shows how a handful of poor, vulnerable Colombian women are able to foil
the best laid plans of the drug war.

It is this and other understated jabs that Marston uses to demonstrate -
better than any policy paper ever could - the futility of U.S. drug-war
efforts in Colombia. Yet in spite of Hollywood's promising move from
depicting the drug-involved as violent automatons, the U.S. government
marches on with the drug war and Plan Colombia.

The mess we are in is caused by the drug war, not by teenage Colombian
girls who ache for a better life for themselves and their children. Josh
Marston knows this. Millions of Americans and Colombians know. How can our
policymakers claim not to?