Guantanamera!
Picture: C+
Sound: B Extras: C- Film: B-
When Yoyita (Conchita Brando), one of Cuba’s great diva
vocalists, returns to her hometown, it is a reason for the whole town to
celebrate. Unfortunately, she passes
away form the excitement and Guantanamera! (1995) spends the rest of the
film exploring Cuba as her body is shipped across the island.
This is the film that reunited co-directors Tomas
Gutierrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabio since their stunning, controversial,
international breakthrough Strawberry and Chocolate in 1993. Gutierrez Alea was a veteran filmmaker who
was having health troubles, when Tabio stepped in to help. The relationship clicked and these two films
resulted before Gutierrez Alea left us in 1996.
In a foreshadowing of things to come, Adolfo (Raul Eguren)
had been discussing burials, and his wife Gina (Mirta Ibarra, who happens to be
the wife of the late Gutierrez Alea) happens to be the niece of Yoyita. When they ride Yoyita’s body to her final
resting place, it becomes a reflective look at Cuban society itself. What this critic did not realize at the time
was that the Gutierrez Alea had passed away and was ill in the making of the
film, so the ideas of death and watching your homeland go by were more personal
than first realized.
As they stand, they are realized quite well. That is even if Tabio had to finish the
remaining work himself. All master
filmmakers who know their time is short manage to effectively implement their
feelings and thoughts on death in their pictures, such as Alfred Hitchcock (Frenzy),
Stanley Kubrick (Eyes Wide Shut), and John Huston (The Dead). This film fits that category, but there is
joy and also a question that Eliseo Alberto Diego and the co-directors’
screenplay asks. What kind of future is
there for Cuba, with changes slowly happening everywhere? What will Cuba retain in this change? Can its people find a better tomorrow? Will traditions be replaced by
“progress”? This portion is
bittersweet.
The full screen image is not anamorphic, but the film was
shot by cinematographer Hans Burmann, A.E.C., and not Gutierrez Alea’s longtime
cameraman Mario Garcia Joya. It is
slight variations like that and a co-director that makes this film even more
off-kilter than intended. Some of the
themes become obvious, yet you are still watching with interest to the
end. The transfer has some odd color,
and the definition is troubled a bit.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo plays back very nicely in Pro Logic. Though the film was a Dolby Digital
theatrical release, there is sadly no 5.1 mix here, but what is here is nice
and thick, especially when the music kicks in.
The extras include a nice write-up from the foldout inside the DVD case,
filmography and words about cast and crew, and several trailers for New Yorker
DVDs including this one.
The film is also one that delves into sexuality, which is
not as odd as that seems, since the sex and death drives are interlinked. After all, sex is also strongly associated
with renewal, which brings us back to the film’s overview of Cuba and the world
to begin with. Guantanamera! is
also comic, which means this film has a wide range of things to offer and
demand to be seen.
- Nicholas Sheffo
