Barrio Cuba [Cuba 2005]

Barrio Cuba
Director: H. Solás
Cinematographer: C. Solís

A film about the height of the Special Period made toward the end of the period. On the surface this film is a simple interweaving of several disconnected fables; but it can pretty clearly be read as a metaphor for the ordeal of the entire Cuban people during the 1990s, and in particular of the middle generation who came of age in the 1980s, only to be disappointed by the 1990s.

The film is shot in the self-consciously gritty and simple style of 'poor cinema', which seeks to emphasise, rather than conceal, low production values in poor countries. This stylistic choice frames the film perfectly; it is a simple and direct statement of the sense of the special period. It also fits well the rather simple and melodramatic plot lines, creating an overall sense of surface simplicity which frames a greater emotional depth.

Another interesting stylistic choice is that most of the shots in this film are of particularly run-down and barren areas of Cuba, looking almost post-apocalyptic. This is a considerable contrast to another Special Period film, Strawberry and Chocolate, which portrays the decay of Havana in a more colourful and mixed way. It seems the choice of physical landscapes mirrors the barrenness of the emotional landscape; it seems hopeless, empty, searching.

That hopelessness pervades much of the plot. The film deals honestly with the great suffering of Cuban people during this period; we see alcoholism, abandonment, people leaving the island, jineteros and jineteras, people engaged in criminal rackets involving stealing goods and presumably selling them on the black market--in short, people doing all the things that many had to do to survive in the Special Period. As a Cuban reviewer puts it, the characters in this film could have gone by many names, because their stories were repeated many thousands of times across the island. What is interesting is that as the period is coming to a close, there seems to be an appetite among Cubans for such a frank film, rather than a desire to turn away from it.

Another major theme here is the generational disconnect engendered by the Special Period. The main characters here are the young adults, the generation that gave birth to jineteros and jineteras, the ones who grew up in relative affluence during the 1980s and saw it all crumble around them. The older generation is represented as wanting very much to see the future that they built picked up and continued. An old man falls in love with a younger woman, who tells him that she can't possibly be faithful to him, because she likes young men; an old grandfather's heart is broken by his children taking his grandchildren away to Miami, because at his age, grandchildren are the only source of happiness. In other words, there is a sense that the young generation are breaking the heart of the older generation, who had such high hopes for their future. But we cannot blame the younger generation for this; it is made clear that they do what they do out of necessity. Interestingly, when one of them is feeling guilt and frustration over his father's heart-broken state, he talks about how his parents had built and built, and then suddenly everything fell apart around them--and he uses the same word for 'to fall apart' as is generally used in Cuba when describing the 'fall of the socialist camp'.

But there is also a third generation here, i.e. children. This provides for powerful symbolism in the form of a young boy whose mother dies in childbirth, and whose father then breaks down and leaves, spending most of the film as a criminal and an alcoholic in the East. It seems not too much of a stretch to think of the struggle of the father throughout the film as being representative of a much bigger struggle, to overcome the sense of loss at what could have been, had the socialist camp survived, and to get back on one's feet and care for the actual future, rather than mourning for the no longer possible one. Thus the sense of heartbreak is not just among the older generation but also among the young; the difference is that it is the young who must find a way to survive, and who therefore waver and feel guilt as well at betraying or disappointing their past, represented by the older generation.

The final development of the film, however, is one of hope and forgiveness, conferred by the next generation of children. By the end, many people have left Cuba, many hearts have been broken that will not heal, and the society has changed forever; but nevertheless, they have actually pulled through. The last shot of the film, like the last shot of The Gleiwitz Case, sheds a great deal of light on the film as a whole. The abandoned boy and his father meet again, both crying; the father goes down on his knees and covers his face, presumably overcome by guilt and shame; and it is his son who walks up to him and takes his hand away from his face, embracing him. Thus in the end, the middle generation are forgiven for what they have done, because they have made it through and come back to face and take responsibility for their future. The whole film thus becomes a testimony to the pain of the Special Period, and the very frankness of the testimony is acceptable because it is not a condemnation of what people have had to do, but rather an acceptance and a forgiveness of it. It is a bittersweet survival, but people have survived nonetheless.

There is also an interesting bit of forgiveness in the other direction, through a subplot involving a son thrown out by his father for being gay. Both come to forgive each other, in part because the father needs the son. So there is also a sense in which the older generation has wronged the younger, and there is some mutual reconciliation--a process that also formed part of the 1990s in this very form.

There are a few other interesting bits of symbolism in the film. The gay son's bedroom is filled with posters of ballet dancers, in what seems to be an attempt at humour at the fact that his father never realised he was gay in spite of this; so this seems to be another repetition of the Cuban stereotype of gay men as being particularly interested in artistic things or 'high culture', as in Strawberry and Chocolate. When the father who abandoned his son after his wife died finally begins to recover, it is in the home of some peasants in the countryside in the East of Cuba; he has grown a beard and is laid out much like Che in the famous post-mortem photo, an old peasant woman works some santería magic on him, and he plays with some children around a tree--it seems his recovery is fuelled by a basic reminder of what is important and perhaps by Cuba itself, represented perhaps by its lush trees, more colourful than the rest of the film. And there is some involvement of religion; a woman who has never before believed in anything goes to a church and prays to be reunited with her husband and for children, and she keeps her promise to dress like the Virgin Mary--again perhaps a nod to some of the greater acceptance of religion in the 1990s, as well as a simple testimony to the understandable fact of people turning to religion in a desperate time.

In sum, it seems that the bleak, simple, and gritty style and plot of the film serves to create a platform on which a great more complexity and depth can grow. But that complexity is not engineered or artificial; it seems to be intended to simply reflect a real shared experience of the 1990s. In the end, the message of the film is in fact simple but worth repeating. Like Mirror, it tells the story of a generation and its psychological dilemmas; but unlike that film, it ends not in reflection but in hope--that is, it follows a trajectory which fits the difficult path that Cuban people have had to follow since 1991.