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Friday, May 19, 2006
'The Lost City' loses its way
Andy Garcia's love letter to pre-revolution Havana has every earmark of an ambitious actor's dream project. Rich with texture and drunk with music (much of it composed by Garcia), it's full of characters with import more symbolic than dramatic (Bill Murray plays a veritable court jester), ideas that wander and contradictions that dissipate.
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View all photosWritten by Cuban expatriate novelist G. Cabrera Infante, the sprawling film views the social and political change from the elevated gaze of "apolitical" nightclub owner Fico Fellove (Garcia). Part of Cuba's privileged class, he sees his family brought low and his dreams (namely his glitzy club that caters to local celebrities and rich tourists) torn down by the revolution. When the revolution "seduces" the love of his life (Inés Sastre), it becomes downright personal.
Like so many films about Cuba, it is fascinatingly ambivalent. While it celebrates the revolution as a triumph over the corrupt rule of a decadent dictator and exploitation by American businessmen and gangsters, it gives no more than lip service to the poverty and discontent in Cuba under the preening Batista.
Meanwhile, it casts a nostalgic glow over Garcia's "lost city" of Havana, shown solely as a playground of the privileged. Is it a coincidence there is no single working-class Cuban or impoverished peasant among the leading characters? That would tarnish that nostalgic luster.
Some of the confusion suggests the unresolved emotions of someone working out their mixed feelings through the film and, to his credit, Garcia lends a dignity to those who join Castro in the cause of social reform and economic justice. But for all the color and lively music, it's an overlong, messy labor of love built on a sense of personal betrayal that rings hollow.
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