Hard times return to the big screen

Last February, as the economy skidded into a ditch, “Slumdog Millionaire” won the ultimate Hollywood bonanza. The story of plucky Mumbai hovel-dwellers took eight Oscars, including best picture. This winter, “Precious,” concerning a Harlem girl struggling against poverty and abuse, has won exuberant praise, as “The Blind Side,” the story of a poor black boy adopted by a rich white family, became the nation’s No. 1 hit.

Each film has sparked controversy. Critics charge they cater to preconceptions about the poor. Boosters praise them for shining a light on unglamorous stories that are rarely told.

What’s undeniable is that tales of resilience in the face of hardship have struck a chord with recession-battered audiences. Economic insecurity is a topic in feature films in a way not seen since the Great Depression, when Busby Berkeley musicals featured montages of bread lines and stars like William Powell and Joel McCrea played hobos.

For much of the past 30 years, poverty was nowhere to be seen on the nation’s movie screens except in blaxploitation films shot on location amid urban blight, and in documentaries such as “American Dream,” Barbara Kopple’s account of the Hormel meatpacking strike, and “Hoop Dreams,” about two inner-city Chicago kids who hope to play pro basketball.

Now worrisome economic realities are fodder for small critical darlings and studio blockbusters alike.

Hard times are front and center in the current art-house hit “Up in the Air,” a George Clooney film about an executive who fires longtime employees. Most of those dismissed onscreen were nonactors who had recently been laid off; director Jason Reitman wanted the authenticity of their pain to speak for itself. In many films the characters hardly even seem to have jobs. In “Up in the Air,” they worry that they have nothing else.

As Horatio Alger could have explained, the key to these films’ success isn’t their timely subject matter. It’s how the stories are told. Studio films are about revenue raising, not consciousness raising; they sell inspiration and reassurance. Like the jackpot-winning hero of “Slumdog,” stories of hope can reap rich rewards. Films with ambiguous or downbeat endings may be equally touching — and more honest — but draw much smaller audiences.

Last spring’s “The Soloist” tackled the taboo subject of middle-class vulnerability. Robert Downey Jr. took viewers on long tours of L.A.’s mean streets. He played a Los Angeles Times columnist, Steve Lopez, who wrote about a homeless sidewalk musician (Jamie Foxx). The film tells us that Lopez’s apparent security is a fragile structure perched on a tottering economic system. At the margins of that story, a stream of downsized Times staffers push carts full of their cubicle trappings out the exit to an uncertain future. It concludes on a note of jaded realism.

“The Soloist” — which drew middling audiences — is not a feel-good movie, though it should make viewers feel good about its courage in confronting the causes and consequences of destitution.

The bleakest vision of poverty this year is “The Road,” a stark drama of life as a pitiless Darwinian testing ground. Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee are a father and son wandering across a blighted landscape, confronting the disappearance of civilization. As a metaphor for ecological and economic collapse, the film warns that we live in a fool’s paradise, never admitting how close we skirt the abyss.

Its grim and beautiful poetry won critical raves but frightened off audiences. Contentment demands a daily reprieve from such thoughts.

The indie hit “Precious” manages to have it both ways. A savvy blend of dark realism and uplift, it attracted the sponsorship of media-savvy crowd-pleasers Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey, who signed on as executive producers to boost the film.

Compared with its source material — Sapphire’s gritty novel “Push” — the film is a gentler experience from the title onward. Geoffrey Fletcher’s script struck the right note after a string of screenwriters had failed.

Fact-based stories of deprivation can succeed with mainstream audiences, too, if they provide a happy resolution.

Although “The Blind Side” is inspired by NFL draft pick Michael Oher’s life story, it rearranges the facts into a standard-issue Hollywood fable — “Cinderella,” with Sandra Bullock as the fairy godmother. The focus is not on the impoverished Oher, whose viewpoint is scarcely represented, but on Bullock’s character, who makes salvaging this lost boy from the Memphis housing projects her life’s mission.

The tale is an offshoot of inner-city heartwarmers such as Michelle Pfeiffer’s “Dangerous Minds,” where at-risk students are rescued by altruistic teachers. In this case, the do-gooding is done by a wealthy conservative family following the dictates of Christian charity. “Am I a good person?” Bullock’s character asks her husband. It’s a rhetorical question; every scene casts her as a guardian angel.

Evangelical publications and megachurch pastors have praised “The Blind Side,” which has been embraced by audiences nationwide, especially in red-state America. The market research firm CinemaScore gives it an A-plus viewer rating; only Pixar’s “Up” scored as high this year. An Oscar campaign for Bullock is already under way.

The film’s success could mean that similar movies will be green-lit, not because studio executives are interested in saving the world, but because they’re concerned about saving their jobs. Movies that perform well generate copycats. Those that confront uncomfortable subjects too directly die without heirs.

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