Maxima
What is there about one person making a stand, making a stand against a big ugly company? Be fair to the multi-national corporation with a depleted, open-pit gold mine needing to be replaced. This one person is, well, just one person, just some poor person.
Maxima is her name. The film about her is called “Maxima.” She and her husband own a remote piece of land high in the Andes Mountain of Peru. They’re proud of their plot. They subsist on their plot. They tend their garden and animals.
Put aside how the corporation pollutes and rips up the countryside. The corporation, the police who are on the corporation’s side, people who look to the corporation for their paychecks in a tough world, all behave badly. They deny that Maxima owns her land. They surround her, enclose her on her land. They trespass on her land, rip up her crops. They commit violence. Maxima wins in courtrooms, but the corporation essentially ignores the verdict.
Maxima shows more than tenacity. She shows grace. Maxima applies herself in a shoulder-to-the-grindstone sort of way. She also plays the system with an attractive sort of dynamic calm.
The film, “Maxima,” is depressing but in a life affirming way. Is there hope for Maxima in her small life? Will the big ugly corporation succeed in mining another huge ugly pit for its ounces of gold per ton? Whatever happens to Maxima beyond the film, there’s a basic need to root for a life like hers.