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 he most perplexing question that comes to mind while (and
sticks with you well after) watching Wim Wenders' Buena Vista Social Club
is just how did these great musicians get so lost in the world, that only now,
when most of them are reaching their twilight years, did they finally come to
our attention? Indeed, many of the real-life Cuban musicians that makes up the
loosely-named Buena Vista Social Club are in their 80s or early 90s. The
youngest member is somewhere in his 60s.
There really isn't a band called the
Buena Vista Social Club. The name itself belongs to a music club where many of
the musicians once played during the heights of their careers. The club is in
Cuba, and has since been ignored and abandoned for decades now. The club itself
is a direct allegory on the musicians. Once famous and innovative, they're now
old men living quiet lives, all but forgotten.
The main thrust of Buena Vista Social Club, from
what I can gather from the film, is that American musician Ry Cooder traveled to
Cuba to meet a friend and discuss plans to record music by some local talents.
When musicians who were supposed to be there couldn't make it, Cooder discovered
(or to be more precise, re-discovers) musicians who he had listened to years ago
in the States via cassettes that someone had given him. Before long, a group of
Cuban old-timers are gathered back together, shakes off the dirt and rust, and
turns out an album that becomes a big hit in the States. Long dormant and
forgotten even in their native Cuba, the musicians are once again thrust back
into the spotlight. Two years later, director Wim Wenders, known for
feature-length movies, returns to Cuba with Cooder to do a documentary about
these musicians and at the same time discover the hidden slums, alleys, and rich
culture of Cuba.
And Buena Vista Social Club The Movie is born.
The movie itself is composed of terrific music played by
the musicians, live and recorded, and cuts between a concert by the Club in
Amsterdam and the musicians back in Cuba among the people, in their homes, and
around the city. The musicians are all given ample opportunity to introduce
themselves and talk about their background, how they got to where they were, and
reflect on their own deeply personal stories. It's all very mesmerizing stuff
and everything is filmed with digital handheld and stedicam videocameras.
As
directed by Wenders, the musician "interviews" become little
vignettes, as the camera rarely remains still, and has some pretty innovative
and creative moves, like long marches through hallways, through homes, and
streets. The result is that you don't feel like you're watching men discussing
their lives, but watching them relive it before your eyes. Everything becomes
crisp and lively and never static and boring. After a while, the men don't seem
to notice that the camera is there and their stories become truly personal and
accessible, as if they're talking to a friend and not a recording equipment.
If there's one political statement that is made in the
film, it's the terrible repercussions of Cuba's isolation by the rest of the
world. The isolation, as anyone familiar with history and politics well knows,
is mostly at the hands of the U.S. Only now, as the economic and cultural
sanctions on the island nation begin to weaken, daylight begins to filter into
Cuba and vice versa. Cuban music is starting to re-appear on the world stage
again, unopposed by the U.S. or the paranoid Cuban government. As a long
casualty of Cuba's rather odd and staunch communist stand, Cuban music and
culture as a whole has suffered the most.
This, of course, doesn't seem to
bother the Cuban government very much, who are still insisting to their people
in posters and billboards that "The Revolution is Eternal." It's
ironic that the Cuban government is the only one who believes this, since the
people doesn't seem to care, as most notably shown by the Club musicians'
gleeful and heartfelt reactions during their stay in New York City. Also in New
York, the band gets to play at the fame Carnegie hall.
The film weaves interviews with visits back to Cuba, the
history of the music, and the concerts in Amsterdam and two years later, in New
York City. Everything is done seamlessly and Wenders' choice to shoot the movie
as more of an "experience" instead of a documentary brings vitality
and life to the subject, much like these 80 and 90-year-old men does to the
Cuban music scene.
Who says age is a hindrance?
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