[SPOILER WARNING] – If you plan on watching the movie “Golden Door”, DO NOT PROCEED any further. The plot’s ending is outlined here.
Not too long ago, I implemented this new thing for myself where once a week, I would catch a movie on Wednesday night (or Thursday night) alone. Why? Well, I spend too much time at work, and when I’m not at work, I’m playing ice hockey, and that pretty much sums up my life right now. At any rate, it’s just a time period I’ve blocked out for myself to decompress, reflect, and maybe learn a thing or two from the movie.
Tonight, I watched Golden Door at the local independent theater. Basically, it’s a story of a dirt poor illiterate family in Sicily and the father (Salvatore Mancuso)’s dream of a better life, and his struggle to immigrate to the United States. Along the way, and stuck in the same boat and in the same class (the boat separated the “upper” class and the “lower” class), is this gorgeous, intelligent and elegant lady who obviously belongs to the upper class — but was stuck with the lower class. In the movie, it wasn’t clear how she fell out of place, but she was English and had no passport.
So anyway, during the journey, all the rich gentlemen from the upper class were actively wooing her, each of them boasting of their wealth, how he owns this big co. and that big co., and the promises of how “I can get you out of this [lower class] mess”. The lower class people had to sleep in really tight and filthy quarters on the boat. Living conditions for the poor was pretty bad on the boat.
The lady, Lucy Reed, did not take up any of their offers. However, since she had no passport, as a legal requirement, she needed to arrive in the US either married or engaged. As they neared the US harbor, she made her choice and asked Salvatore Mancuso (father of the poor family) if he would marry her. She did disclose to him that she needed a husband for entry to the country, and that their marriage was more out of convenience than love.
So why I am rambling about this? Well, because she didn’t take the easy way out. She could have married any of the wealthy gentlemen and be instantly elevated to “upper” class status, but she chose to stick it out with the lower class hardship and jump through all the immigration hoops designed for poor and illiterate people.
While it isn’t clear in the movie why she did that, it does remind me of an important lesson I have learned — that taking the easy way out is not always the answer. Sometimes, there will be a “deferred” price to pay, but a price, nonetheless.
In this movie (just to speculate), she probably valued her freedom and didn’t want to be tied down by a husband — be he rich or not. So she went with the simple and poor uncomplicated man. The rich gentlemen would probably have restricted her freedom more and be more strict with her, than the poor man. I’d imagine the rich gentleman insisting she be a stay-at-home wife, when she is more of the working-mom personality, which the latter would be aligned with the poor man’s strategy. The poor man could surely use all the bread-millers in the house he can get.
Here’s the trailer: