My Review of "I'm No Longer Here"

I'm No Longer Here had a pretty compelling trailer that made me anticipating on it's release on Netflix. It's about this kid that comes from Mexico that has to come to America. I thought it was going to be a pretty light teen drama but it turned out to be much more than this. It's an incredibly deep study into the psyche of a teenager that had been plucked from his life in small town in Mexico called Monterrey and placed in the middle of New York city. I was completely entranced by this movie.

This movie starts out with an explanation of a subculture in Mexico called Kolumbia. People that fall into this counterculture group love a slowed down music known as Cumbia. I had to look this up but Cumbia is a very popular genre of music from Columbia back in the 1960s. The origins of this genre stem even further back with a rich history that goes all the way back to African slavery.

The movie's protagonist Ulises is being taken somewhere by car while a friend of his is grieving his departure. She hands him an mp3 player that contains their favorite genre of music and away he goes.

The next thing you know he's in New York city working in any sort of manual labor job. He's 17 years old and alone in a huge city in a foreign country. To make matters even more difficult he doesn't understand a word of English. Even as an adult that is intimidating but for someone as young as him it's unimaginably difficult.

He's grouped up with a bunch of Spanish speaking men that are pretty obtuse of his situation. As the movie progresses we learn new things about Ulises and his circumstances.

The trailer for this movie kind of made me think this was going to be a feel good teen drama but this is definitely not what this movie is. As Ulises' past history gets revealed you start to understand that his situation is a lot worse than you imagine. I felt extremely bad for this guy and it would continue to get worse.

I soon realized that this guy used to be a pretty big thing back in his town only to be a total nothing in this huge city. He has a love for the dance to Cumbia and he never really loses this passion but it is crippling to see how everyone in the movie constantly disregard his love. I guess this is similar to how a lot of immigrants feel as many of their simple pleasures aren't appreciated anymore in their new settings. Throughout the movie I kept hoping that he doesn't lose his passion for his art but there's always a feeling he's going to lose it. Too many people are pushing him to conform and that's a lot to take.

In a way, I can see this pressure to conformity being very relatable to a general audience. It's something we all face everyday when we have different opinions and viewpoints. I would imagine it would be even more difficult for someone from a foreign country at such a young age.

This is a pretty difficult movie to watch through if you don't want to see suffering. It's a mental suffering that not a lot of people take into consideration when they think of people coming to a big city such as New York. America is usually portrayed as the land of opportunity but in this movie we kind of see the opposite. We see a nation of conformists that try to conform someone that is utterly different from themselves.

Questions ran through my head while watching this movie. I was wondering if there could have been different circumstances if things were a little different. In some cases the events that happened to Ulises was actually a best case scenario in some ways. He could have died and had a lot more difficult things happen to him throughout the movie if it wasn't for some of the people that he met.

Still there was such a feeling of genuineness that came out of this movie. I could see all of the events in this movie actually happening in real life. It's scary and sad at the same time. I'm really glad that they made this movie because it really gave me a totally different perspective of young immigrants.

Overall, I really enjoyed this movie. It isn't a comfortable movie to watch through but it is certainly an eyeopening one. Hopefully it gets some popularity because it really deserves to be watched by many in my opinion. I have to give this movie an 8 out of 10. Please watch it and recommend it to others because it's got a pretty powerful message.