In the Heights, the latest blockbuster musical directed by Jon M. Chu and based on the Tony-winning musical of the same name by Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda has a lot to offer to audiences. It’s got catchy songs, stunning musical numbers, relatable characters, and a strong story. But what makes the film emotionally impactful is the hyper-specificity in the film’s portrayal of what it’s like being a Latinx immigrant.
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for In the Heights.]
Where Hollywood has long portrayed Latinx characters in the broadest of stereotypes, In the Heights celebrates the differences big and small that make the Latin American diaspora so special. We see flags from dozens of Latin American countries proudly waving outside of apartments and stores throughout the film. We hear Latinx heroes like Juan Luis Guerra and Celia Cruz get name-checked without further explanation. The bodega where our main character, Usnavi (Anthony Ramos) works at carries everything from Cafe Pilon, to Vaporub, plantain chips and queso panela, while dinner scenes feature pernil, flan, carne guisada, tamales and more in close-up shots. The opening scene (which you can watch right here) features a small but significant detail largely missing from Hollywood portrayals of Latinx people — characters just doing their regular morning routine and living normal lives.
There is an indescribable joy in something as simple as hearing characters shout ¿bendicion? in a major movie. Like Olga Merediz‘s Abuela Claudia says in the film, it’s all about “Little details that tell the world we are not invisible.” But where the film shines the brightest is in the way it portrays the struggle of coming to terms with what “home” means when you’re an immigrant.
We see this the moment we meet Usnavi, as he sings about his dream of returning to his and his parent’s native Dominican Republic to revive his father’s dream of managing a beach-side bar. Like Usnavi, we meet many other members of the community who have their own dreams, whether they’re small, like moving to a different neighborhood to improve your business or wanting to out-sell the ice cream truck, or big like wanting to fix the immigration and housing crises in the country.
But In the Heights quickly starts interrogating whether these dreams are really ours, or whether we are chasing a responsibility being placed on our shoulders by our family and community. In the case of Usnavi, he doesn’t really know the Dominican Republic or what he’ll actually do when he gets there, he just knows that’s what his father always talked about, and that the Dominican Republic is where he was born. As his cousin Sonny (Gregory Diaz IV) reminds him, Usnavi hasn’t seen the island since he was a kid, other than on short family trips. In the Heights portrays a very specific kind of romanticism, which Sonny refers to as “island fever,” where first- and second-generation kids don’t feel at home in the country they live in. Whether it’s due to their parents’ constantly talking about the countries they had to leave behind, or the kids themselves just wondering about whether life would be better if their families had stayed in Latin America.
I left my home country of Venezuela with my family when I was 13. I was old enough to still have some memories of living there, but life as a kid is much different than life as an adult. I would not be anywhere near confident enough in my memories to think I could simply move back permanently. Even if some of my childhood friendships endure to this day, my relationship with my home country is unequivocally and immutably altered by my journey as an immigrant. Like Usnavi, I used to go back for the summer every year for nearly a decade, but every time I went back, I felt more and more like a tourist in my hometown. What starts as subtle details, like being out-of-date with the local slang, accumulates into a feeling of not belonging in what you may feel is still supposed to be your home.
That feeling of being a tourist in your home country is exacerbated by having your parents, family and/or friends continuously talk about both the wonders of your home country, and the goal of ultimately returning home. But for “1.5 generation” immigrants who don’t feel like they have anything of their own to return to, it just feels like you’re chasing someone else’s dreams out of a sense of duty rather than fulfillment. Just like it seems as if Usnavi’s goal of returning to the D.R. is actually him just following his parent’s dreams, so does Nina (Leslie Grace) struggle with coming to terms with whether she’s following her own dreams or her parents’ wishes.
The neighborhood considers Nina as “the one who made it out” and the pride of the barrio by her parents and neighbors, but she is actually returning home after having dropped out of Stanford. In a brilliant change from the stage to the screen, Nina no longer drops out of financial reasons (though that still plays a part), but because she doesn’t feel like she belongs in such a wealthy and white space as an elite college, where she experienced wave after wave of microaggressions and faced a sense that she had to justify her presence while at Stanford. In one musical number, Nina fantasizes about what life would have been had her parents stayed in Puerto Rico. “Who would I be if I had never seen Manhattan/If I lived in Puerto Rico with my people, My people!”
That line perfectly encapsulates In the Heights’ portrayal of the kind of speculation first and second-generation immigrants spend most of their young lives asking themselves; what I am still asking myself from time to time. As Miranda himself said, “That question of finding home is not only a geographical one but really an emotional one.” What does it mean like to be Puerto Rican if you don’t live in Puerto Rico? How can you be a proud Venezuelan if you don’t live there and don’t visit that often? Nina’s struggles are two-fold, as her parents and community pressure her to be different and more successful than the other members of her community, to be “the one who made it out,” while still wearing her community on her sleeve and represent where she comes from. That paradox where you’re being constantly reminded by your parents that you need to do certain things or act in a certain way because that’s how they do things, while still being asked to adapt, assimilate and act like other kids because this is your new home is something that I, and millions of other immigrant kids, faced, which only adds to that inner conflict. Am I meant to act Venezuelan? Or Norwegian? Where do I draw the line between one and the other? What traditions am I meant to keep and which ones should I adopt?
In the Heights, of course, offers no answers, but it does offer an alternate take via Sonny, who is younger than Usnavi and has known no other home than New York. During the big ensemble number, “96,000” every character sings about what dream they’d be able to fulfill if they win the lottery, where they’d go and what they’d do. But where most talk about their plans of leaving, Sonny sings about investing that money back in the community to fight the immigration and housing crises. In the third act we learn that Sonny is actually undocumented, so he’s the one with the biggest impediment to fully integrate into society, yet he’s the one fighting the hardest to stay in Washington Heights rather than leave. We don’t choose where we’re born, the film argues through Sonny’s story, but we can choose what to call home.
Is In the Heights perfect? No. Does it encapsulate every aspect of the immigrant story? Absolutely not. Like with Chu’s Crazy Rich Asians, not everyone will see themselves represented on screen, but that’s okay. In the Heights makes the case that there are hundreds of stories worth telling about this community, and we should celebrate them all with pride, song, and dance. As Miranda’s Piragüa Guy says in the film, “Alza la bandera!”
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