That '70s Drift: Working Poor

Actress Lee Grant turned to documentaries about the underclass during the Reagan era. Here are two hourlong entries:

DOWN AND OUT IN AMERICA (1986) (B+) - We meet with different factions across the nation suffering under first-wave Reaganism: family farmers (during the height of the Farm Aid era), blue-collar workers (as unions fracture), homeless people and welfare recipients (dealing with drug addiction). Lee Grant's filmmaking style owes a lot to the Maysles brothers, though her cinematic and political naivete (faux or real) is an advantage, as it helps her form simple, straightforward questions, as a viewer would.

Grant does not try to hide her elite liberalism or empathy for her subjects. This comes off as a (com)passion project of advocacy for those getting left behind in Gordon Gecko's scrubbed new world. The couple at the end (not the first pair in the film to seemingly have more kids than they can support) are alternatively pathetic and heartbreaking as they live in a New York City hovel provided by the government after being burned out of their home at Coney Island. They struggle to find the right words of appeal, and the more we hear from them, the more we can't help but think that they've made too many bad choices in their life. Grant passes no judgment; see if you can do the same.

THE WILLMAR 8 (1981) (B) - This is a touching portrait of the eight women who fought for a couple of years as strikers at a small bank in Willmar, Minn. Grant faithfully documents their struggle through the judicial system of the National Labor Relations Board. We see them picket daily, though (apparently for dramatic purposes) almost always in the dead of a Minnesota winter.

Grant has a little less than an hour to get to know the women, and a few of the personalities emerge in the forefront. The timing -- the late 1970s -- places us in an ugly sexist world that, a good decade into the bra-burning era, still expects women to accept second-class status, grateful for anything they are given if they dare venture out of the home. Tired of training men for jobs that paid more than the women were earning, the women formed a union and walked off the job.

It helps to not know (or revisit) the details of the events before watching the film. That will make the conclusion (a mixed result) more satisfying. Shot is rough black-and-white, this 40-year-old document reminds us how crude and soul-crushing life could be back in the grim '70s.