Actor Benjamin Bratt turns positively evangelical when talking about his brother, writer-director Peter Bratt, whose vibrant drama “La Mission” opens today.
“What I admire most about my brother is, he’s a deep thinker,” Benjamin says. “He’s an intellectual — though he’d never admit to it. He’s obsessed with big ideas. I haven’t been so much,” he says on the phone, then laughs.
Tonight, area moviegoers have an opportunity to listen to Bratt wax dearly on his older brother, their filmmaking partnership and the San Francisco neighborhood that gives the movie its title and in which they grew up, when he speaks after three screenings of “La Mission.”
Bratt, perhaps best known for his turn as Detective Ray Curtis on “Law & Order,” portrays Che Rivera. It was a role Peter Bratt wrote with Benjamin in mind.
“In looking over the body of my work as a professional actor, he recognized that I’d never really been given an opportunity to explore characters as complex as Che,” says Bratt. “It really is a gift,” he says.
“It has deepened our relationship as brothers when neither of us considered that possible. We’ve always been best friends and had a great admiration for one another. To become partners in filmmaking has really revealed the similarities, but also the subtle differences.”
An ex-con and recovering alcoholic, Che is not an easy guy to like. A single father, he loves his teen son Jes with ferocity. Yet, when he learns Jes is gay, his world is shattered. Instead of making sense of this new reality, he comes out swinging.
Che is Bratt’s finest turn. He hits notes of wounded anguish and repellent fury.
” ‘La Mission’ is not a coming-out story,” Bratt cautions. He’s right. While Jes (Jeremy Ray Valdez) doesn’t want to disappoint his father, his sexuality is not the problem here. “He has the personal courage to be who he is,” the actor says. And there are folk in the community who embrace Jes, including a loving aunt and uncle. Not to mention that the Mission abuts San Francisco’s famously gay district, the Castro.
Jes is not alone. Che might wind up being alone.
Bratt calls the film “a coming-of- age story, not of the son, but of the father. He’s battled his demons, but he has a long way to go. And learning that his son is gay starts him on the next path.
“The trick was not to demonize Che,” says Bratt. “What allows us as an audience, or any of us who recognize a person like that, is we also see the other part of them.” Che does love Jes. He loves his community. He loves his extended family. He’s even falling for his take-no-guff neighbor, Lena.
The handsome actor, who’s of Peruvian descent on his mother’s side, captures Che’s macho authority but also depicts his brute awareness of its cost. Che knows he’s responsible for his losses. That doesn’t mean he can easily break his rough habits.
And, neither, says Bratt, can audiences.
When Che challenges a couple of toughs, we feel vindicated. After all, we’re accustomed to that sort of might-makes-right intervention. When he throws Jes out, we may despise him.
“We as a filmgoing public have been conditioned to revere characters like that. We certainly respect them. Che’s an archetype. In creating someone who’s immediately recognizable, Peter doesn’t then follow the program. He starts to peel layers back to find out what lies beneath, what drives a person like this,” Benjamin says, admiration creeping back into his voice.
“I’ve never seen a movie about a cholo where it’s love that drives him.”
(Benjamin Bratt will appear for a Q&A after these screenings: 7 p.m. AMC Highlands Ranch; 8 p.m., Regency Tamarac; and 9 p.m. at the Century 16 Aurora. Tickets available on the film’s website )
