"The Last Supper," a new Cuban film by Tomas Gutierrez Alea, the director whose "Memories of Underdevelopment" was one of the critical hits of 1973, is a fine, cool, almost detached political parable told entirely in religious terms. In this way it recalls the kind of contradictions that made "Memories of Underdevelopment" so fascinating, and that are, for Mr. Alea, virtually a stylistic method.
Though "Memories" looks at the Cuban revolution through the eyes of a middle-class intellectual who can't bring himself to participate, the film itself is passionately committed. "The Last Supper" is about death resurrection, not only about the death and resurrection of freedom, but also of repression.
Like the earlier film, it seems to say more than one ever expects to hear in popular revolutionary literature, where ideas and feelings are supposed to be recognized and accommodated by even the dimmest minds.
In the last four decades, Cuba has created a beautiful repertoire of films that portray the social challenges of its people in an ever changing world. The following series gives the audience an opportunity to observe the development of this revolutionary society from the standpoint of the Cuban filmmakers of the 20th Century. Our eyes will be, among others, the ones of characters like the decadent bourgeois, the surviving prostitute, and the socialist idealist. The realities of these characters reveal the universal struggle of the fragile and unflagging human spirit.
No comments:
Post a Comment