The Root of Your Family

In a walk in the clouds, filmmaker Alfonso Arau juxtaposes the budding romance between two young Californians in 1945 with the story of her wine-making family's more mature romance with the land. Victoria Aragon, the pregnant, unwed twenty-something daughter of an upper-class, Mexican-American...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental history 2007-04, Vol.12 (2), p.295-298
Main Author: Brosnan, Kathleen
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Environmental history
Fathers
Frost
Movies
Rootstocks
Special Forum: Films Every Environmental Historian Should See
Tourism
Vineyards
Wine industry
Wine making
Wines
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Summary:In a walk in the clouds, filmmaker Alfonso Arau juxtaposes the budding romance between two young Californians in 1945 with the story of her wine-making family's more mature romance with the land. Victoria Aragon, the pregnant, unwed twenty-something daughter of an upper-class, Mexican-American family, returns home to the Napa Valley from graduate school. On her trip, she meets Paul Sutton, a recently discharged veteran who, disillusioned with his own marriage, has returned to his job as a traveling candy salesman. He pretends to be Victoria's husband temporarily to placate her father. Performing this charade, Paul and Victoria fall in love, but the father remains openly hostile to the young man, who was raised in an orphanage and, in the father's opinion, possesses no sense of family and no sense of place. After obtaining an annulment, Paul tries to explain to the vineyardist how much he loves Victoria. In anger, the father attacks the former soldier and accidentally starts a fire that seemingly ruins the vineyard. Paul climbs a hill and tears from the ground the oldest vine which the family brought to California, via Spain and Mexico, some fifty years earlier. In discovering that its rootstock has escaped the fire's wrath, Paul stakes his place in the family and restores its landed heritage. The father tells Paul, "This is the root of your life, the root of your family. You are bound to this land".
ISSN:1084-5453