Not rated because it's a Cuban film from 1968. It's got a lot of questionable material though. Rape and general sexual assault is commonplace thoughout the movie, especially in the first vignette. This is on screen along with nudity. Sexuality is a key motif throughout all three pieces. Spousal abuse plays a large role within the third vignette. There is also violence leading to death, which includes nudity while the violence is happening. There's one f-bomb, so really they're cover the gamut of things that kids shouldn't walk in on.
DIRECTOR: Humberto Solas I almost broke my own rules. I almost decided to sit down and write this while I was watching this. I know, this is fascinating to the reader, but I also wanted to really break down each individual story in separate pieces, despite being in the same movie directed by the same person. Part of that comes from the fact that the film does hold one voice. With anthology films, there is a responsibility to talk to the individual work and to the work as a whole. Also, it was the weekend and I didn't feel like it. It was Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom weekend with a dash of Star Wars: Jedi Survivor so maybe I decided to follow my own rules. Speaking on the work as a whole, man this is a good looking movie. I can't help but point out the transfer, something that I never make a big deal about. My goodness, the 4K transfer makes this movie look so good that I really question whether or not it was made in 1968. Golly, it's so clean and so modern looking. It has that same cleanliness that something like The Artist had, giving it the feeling of a 21st Century filmmaking but trying to make it look retro. Also, Solas is not afraid of light. Golly, this movie is defined by its use of light. This movie is the anti-noir. Often, a movie will be gorgeous because of its use of the negative space. But Solas (his name seems appropriate right now) is about the use of white space. You could read by the light of this movie it is so bright. But it works. It's what makes the movie look like something special. I don't think a lot of movies have this kind of visual element to their palate. It's complex and personal. Solas also keeps the focus on the individual protagonist, even when there are war sequences. The camera gets close, almost invading the space of the actors. To a certain extent, it creates a sense of melodrama behind all of the stories because everything is so intimate when it comes to emoting. But man alive, it's gorgeous as a film. The only downside to a film like this comes on my part. Like when I had a problem with Argentina 1985, there requires a little bit of local knowledge for me to really get the dynamics of things happening in the movie. Scorsese introduces this movie as part of the Cuban propaganda machine. I kind of get that. In fact, I can probably list this as professional development because I'm going to be talking about this movie when it comes to the role of Soviet cinema. But these movies are fundamentally political. Now, as much as I pretend to not understand the movie I watched intellectually, I think I get it. But I also have to consider that I was never meant to see this movie. It's actually a key concept when watching this movie is that I'm the intellectual Yankee who is picking this apart. Instead, this movie is speaking to the heart of the patriot, proud of the land of Cuba. Maybe I'm well-read. Maybe I'm not. But that last section really screams that I'm being taught about the dangers of ignorance and that the government really has the citizens' best interest in mind. Okay, now to focus on the dividual films. "1895" It's the most epic one, that's for sure. The first movie has the hardest sell and I get the vibe that Solas is giving his all for this one. There's something a bit off about this being a short, however. The story has this message about women being used while having the allegory about the evils of Spain. But the allegory kind of feels...mixed? Again, this can come down to the notion that I don't understand a lot about Cuban history. But the setting plays the foundational role in "1895". Everything is colored by the war between Cuba and Spain. The fact that the male love interest is half-Cuban and half-Spanish makes him representative of the role that Spain has in Cuba. Lucia loves him, but what she loves is a lie. After all, he has a wife and child in Spain. There's a moment where she despises him and that seems where the story should end. After all, it works for the allegory. From a propaganda perspective, Spain seems like the wholesome homeland, spouting works of love and support while, in fact, it is more obsessed with the domestic than losing anything in terms of ownership. Lucia, as a representative of Cuba, is treated more as an object. While she values her Spanish heritage and loves it in the form of a significant other, that love isn't reciprocated in the way that she thinks it is. If the entire movie is about revolution from Spain, her romance needs to reflect that. Now, I'm trying to make the allegory work, so please be patient. I understand that for all of Rafael (?)'s lies, there is a romantic element to that relationship. In some ways, Lucia will always love Rafael, despite his lies. Rafael, in turn, probably believes that he loves Lucia. But there is a discrepency of intention there. Maybe Solas wants to sell the notion that, for all of the bad blood between two countries, there will always be a love there. But that final sequence screams "weak woman" in the face of sexual assault. She has this rallying sequence where she hates what Rafael has done to her. She seems like she is going to destroy him at the abandoned church, but she submits to his physical pestering. It makes the rape of the nuns an odder sequence because Lucia does not learn the lesson that she's presented with earlier. Perhaps the whole thing is a cautionary tale, presenting Lucia as the flawed woman who should not harbor wistful feelings toward Spain. "1930" The middle one is the hardest one to remember always. What's the middle one? Oh, right. It's the even more complicated revolutionary piece. Again, my own weakness is the lack of knowledge in this piece of history. I like that Solas allows for what seems like a healthier relationship than what we saw in the "1895" segment. There's still something completely screwy about their romance, but there's something far more sympathetic about this doomed relationship. This is the piece that possibly has the most healthy romantic overtones, you know, despite the fact that he dies from his own involvement in the revolution. My only guess is that this is a warning against future revolutions. You know, some revolutions are fine and some aren't. (You know, this would have been a really sarcastic comment if we didn't have both the American Revolution and Jan. 6.) But this is actually kind of a heartbreaking story. Lucia, in this one, seems to find herself because of her bond with her husband. It is the rising from a sense of childhood that makes the relationship something greater than what it starts with. Her overbearing mother can only view men through the lens that she sees with her husband / Lucia's father (unless I completely misunderstood that dynamic, which might be the case! I told you that I wanted to write these things in real time so I would remember details better.) Her beau (whose name I may never have gotten and I lack a good summary page to explain these things) seems to have the betterment of society ahead of him. But he views the world through a lens of corruption. Something in him has broken with the violence he has taken place with. Admittedly, he's not paranoid. Those around him quickly seem to be taking the places of the oppressors that they strove to remove from office. But that's the heartbreaking things. It's this knowledge that, in youth, evil seems like such a distant concept. There's that thought that if we got rid of "those" people, the world would be a better place. When we grow up, "those" people are the people that occupy our neighborhoods. They hold gross perspectives on things and you're just supposed to live with them. "196..." Now Martin Scorsese is bothering me a bit. From an educated perspective, I get what he's saying. In the intro to the "196..." section, he calls it a comedy. In terms of technique and neoclassical precepts, you might be able to squint and see this as a comedy. After all, the first two are such clear tragedies that any kind of shift in intensity gives it comic vibes. Also, no one dies, so there's that. I even want to go as far as to say that Solas probably thinks that this is his comic piece, making Scorsese in the right. But good God, this segment is deeply disturbing. It's got funny music. It's got a kid laughing as the woman and her husband fight on the beach. It even has some mild sex jokes. But from any contemporary perspective, it would be a haunting story of domestic abuse. But again, this movie was made in 1968 Cuba. Who am I to say what is considered inappropriate from this perspective. For a good chunk of the movie, including elements from this vignette, there's the notion of the strong woman powering through. As a propaganda piece, it's about abandoning the old Cuba for the progressive future of Cuba, where women must learn to read and write and are not the slaves of their husbands. Cool. But then she goes back to him. And that's apparently where the joke lies. The entire movie, she is kept hostage by her husband, who tells her she may not work or interact with anybody. Perhaps there's an element of his character which seems so extreme that it may come across as comic. But we all know this really happened to many people, right? The husband's extreme jealousy becomes greater and greater and he gets scarier and scarier. The thing is, the movie knows that the husband is outright villainish. It's why the tutor instructs Lucia to escape. She even does and there's nothing really played for laughs, with the exception of the soundtrack. In terms of making things funny, the only thing that makes the tone lighter in this movie is the boisterous soundtrack that has a moralistic narrator describing the events of the movie. I honestly could replace the soundtrack with something more haunting and this segment would match the tone of the other movies. Maybe that's Solas's thing. Maybe he's really good at making movies where women are tortured because of the faults of the men. But the music kind of kills it for the last one. But at the end of the day, these shorts were dope. They were gorgeous films that I can't imagine being made in 1968. Do I think I'll watch more Cuban movies? I don't know. It's not like I have a vast knowledge of Cuban cinema. But that being said, this was was pretty solid. |
Film is great. It can challenge us. It can entertain us. It can puzzle us. It can awaken us.
AuthorMr. H has watched an upsetting amount of movies. They bring him a level of joy that few things have achieved. Archives
October 2024
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