More from the film festival

Warning: minor spoilers

Last night I saw two American (okay, one was Canadian, but that’s basically the same thing) films at the Cuban film festival. The first was Courting Condi, a comedo-tragic-musical-documentary about this really ugly fat white guy who was supposedly in love with Condaleeza Rice and on a mission to win her heart. He starts to learn about her life, taking a road trip through all of her once homes, and writing cheesy love-song music videos, I think he called them ‘love discs’ (instead of love letters or love songs, you know, play on technology, although discs are antiquated now) that he would send to her. It goes through her life story, how she grew up in pre-civil rights Birmingham, wanted to be a concert pianist, etc. The most interesting part of all of this was how she developed (or rather, had naturally assumed) a philosophy of always looking towards the future, never towards the past, no regret, I think it video-quoted her saying ‘I don’t believe in self-reflection.’ Oh, and another interesting part was that she might still be a virgin at the ripe young age of 55! I guess that would explain a lot of her success, all that sexual frustration channeled into hard work, although she seemed to be pretty cozy with W. Of course, the documentary had to end with a half-hour Condi-bash session, in which the ‘love-discs’ became an angry rock metal you betrayed/fooled me you bitch song. Entertaining, a little weird and original, but also a little too predictable.

The second movie I saw was The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, a Canadian film set in the UK with the late Heath Ledger (his last film, he died in the middle of it), set to open officially in theatres across the world this Christmas (yes, I did see a major feature film before it came out in the USA). This was also a very strange film, there were lots of plot elements that were not the easiest to understand, however I would recommend it overall if not just to see Heath Ledger be charming and beautiful one last time and feel sentimental about it. Also, since he died in the middle of shooting, they worked into the story this thing where every time he entered the Imaginarium his face changed, so that Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Ferrell were all in it too, so its pretty loaded with big names and sexy men. That said, if it weren’t for Heath Ledger’s death (resulting in this being his last film and the three other hot shots joining the credits) this movie would probably not be a big deal at all. Other than some interesting imaginative stuff, lots of technological and narrative tricks, contrived symbolism and forced deep religious/good-evil shit, the movie is pretty uncompelling, a silly story about a teenage girl with a weird childhood who just wants to be free to have a normal life and a family, who has two suitors vying for her heart and falls in love one or both of them. The most interesting part was the representation of the devil, who was conniving and a little annoying, and wanted more than anything to just keep playing games. Other than that, however, things were pretty fancy but unexciting. Although now it occurs to me that maybe they decided to drastically change the plot to accommodate Heath Ledger’s death, which might have made it so bad. I guess it was a good choice on their part, because Heath Ledger (and accompanying threesome) will probably make them more money than a decent/comprehensible/unbanal storyline would have. Also, most people will probably be too impressed by all the confusing plot turns, imaginative computer manipulation, and fantastical mythical elements to be bothered with the story anyways. Summary: interesting, but not compelling.

Coolest part of the night: when we got to skip the giant line and ushered into theatre through the bustling mob like kings because we had VIP passes. Well, I didn’t have one, but I was holding the hand of a guy who did, so that made me feel a little like a winner.

baseball and film festival

The 31^st annual International Festival of New Latin American Films started two nights ago in Havana, and we went to the inauguration, where we heard Chucho Valdéz play piano and this famous woman sang, and then an old man gave an extremely long speech and then a very strange Argentinean film was played, <<Los secretos de sus ojos>>. Today someone told me that apparently that film is supposed to win the festival. Personally, I thought it was a little too much, but these are my impressions from it:

-Argentinean accents are obnoxious. They sound like they are trying to speak Italian.

-The camera angles were very strange. I was impressed, however, by their effect, even if I felt it was trying a little too hard at times. Somehow the frames managed to convey to me an image of the world where loneliness and monsters reigned, even before the movie was explicitly about these things. In the beginning of the film, when things still looked like it could just be a normal love story, I started to feel a terribleness welling up inside me—a knowledge of the world as terrible—and by the end of the film, I realized that this was intentional. I guess that’s a pretty impressive feat.

-Too much. It turned out to be a monster story inside a love story inside a detective story inside an age story inside a love story. Meta to the gazillionth power, too long, I thought it would end about ten times but there would be another plot twist and after all that revelation about monstrosity and loneliness the message was simple and trite: time doesn’t kill love. Of course, after 25 years and 2.5 tortuous hours of those twists, murders, and sadness, the two people who truly love each other from the start of the movie get together. Now what’s the point of that untruth?

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Yesterday I went to a Cuban baseball game—Industriales (Havana’s team) against Holguin (visiting team). It cost 1 peso (about 5 cents), the stadium was relatively empty (it was a big stadium), but the people who were there were pretty emotionally invested. There were two groups of people with clankers and trumpets who would play music like a little cheer squad. When good things happened some people who get up and start shaking their asses. Everyone was very supportive of the team, in a way that felt like family, even though Industriales lost 7-8.