Alsino and the Condor [Nicaragua / Cuba 1982]

Alsino y el Cóndor
Director: M. Littín
Cinematographers: J. Herrera, P. Martínez

This is the first full length fictional film made in Nicaragua during the socialist period. It was a co-production of INCINE--the new Nicaraguan film institute--and ICAIC, and it was directed by a Chilean, with a cast from a smattering of Latin American countries. In other words, while it takes place in Nicaragua and tells a Nicaraguan story, it is made with a wider Latin American voice, and indeed is intended to be a metaphor for the wider Latin American struggle.

The film is made in the style of a fairy tale, mixing local Nicaraguan folk stories with archetypal Latin American fantasy characters and themes. It is the story of a boy who wants to fly, but the metaphor is crystal clear: the story is of a people seeking freedom, first learning that they cannot attain it if they try alone, knowing they cannot attain it if they depend on their neocolonial masters, and finally, after bloody tragedy, learning that they can only attain it together, and with a fight.

A strength of the film is its clear focus on portraying the North Americans and their local puppets as complex human beings rather than as demons. The American commander genuinely believes in what he is doing, and genuinely believes that Alsino--a proxy for the Nicaraguan people--can be 'just like him' if he 'studies hard enough'. The local puppet commander responsible for massacres of his own people is torn apart by self-hatred and alcoholism. Apparently (according to Buchsbaum), defenders of the film in Nicaragua were expecting this depiction to offend, and proactively defended the film as breaking down Manichean tendencies; but only a couple of critics were actually offended and most Nicaraguans approved of the film. This perhaps says something for the maturity of the Nicaraguan people at the time.

The discussion in Buchsbaum as a whole of the debate the film instigated is interesting. He says that while most Nicaraguans approved of the film, there were a few critics who were against it, not because of its highly abstract and metaphorical nature, nor because of its anti-Manicheanism, but simply because it did not feel authentically Nicaraguan. The international cast, and details in the film like vehicles, clothes, etc, gave strong cues that this was not Nicaragua. Littín made clear that the film was really about Latin America in general using Nicaragua as a lens, saying he wanted to:

make an open film on the movements of struggle in Latin America and all the movements of struggle in Central America

(quoted in Buchsbaum). Nevertheless, some Nicaraguans, having recently lived through the struggle and trauma depicted, and knowing it as a real and concrete experience, were uncomfortable with the reflection of that experience by a foreign voice in an unrealistic way.

This is interesting not just intrinsically, but because it bears some similarity to the cool reception in Cuba of Kalatozov's I Am Cuba. Both countries had recently come out of a painful and traumatic war after a long period of wrenching poverty, and perhaps neither one was completely comfortable yet with foreign voices trying to depict that experience and inevitably ending up with a ring of inauthenticity. I heard a Cuban commentator in London suggest that maybe Cubans disliked I Am Cuba because the experience was too fresh, and they did not want to think about those times anymore, because the revolution had just happened and they would rather think about the future. But others say it simply didn't feel Cuban; it felt foreign. In the same way it seems some Nicaraguans said this film did not feel Nicaraguan. So maybe it is a combination of these: so soon after these kinds of events, foreigners want very much to dig into the past and find meaning in it for themselves, while those who have gone through the events may simply want to move on, and if they must reminisce, they are perhaps particularly sensitive to inauthenticity. A revolution is not a dinner party.

So this is really a Latin American film more than simply a Nicaraguan film; it is a film reflecting Latin American nationalism and resistance circa 1982. But it still fits properly within the history of socialist cinema because of its significance in the history of the Nicaraguan cinema project and because of the psychological lessons we may be able to draw from it. All this aside, however, it has a certain simple beauty as a fairy tale and an unpretentious, successful cinematic use of extended metaphor.