The Lost City
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Movie Reviews of The Lost City
Movie Review: Visually Stunning Film! I give it Two Thumbs Way Up!
Summary: 5 Stars
Andy Garcia's The Lost City is a feast for the senses. This film is pure art form. I'm glad Andy Garcia didn't compromise his standards. He waited sixteen years to make this movie so he could maintain artistic control over the film. It certainly shows. I was floored by the cinematography and amazing acoustics. The Afro-Cuban rhythms transported me back to the early years of my life in Havana. I loved the music and plan on buying both the film and the soundtrack.
Luis, Fico's brother whose revolutionary alias was "Peligro," or Danger, reminds me a lot of my father. My father was just like Luis. He was a member of the upper middle class who dreamed of a democratic form of government for Cuba. My father fought against Batista's oppressive and brutal regime, just like Luis did. There were many times my Dad could've been killed by Batista's henchmen. I wouldn't be here writing this review if that had happened. At one point Dad had to leave the country. He was exiled in Venezuela in 1958, the year before Castro took over the island. Young idealists, like Dad, and Luis, made Fidel's rise to power a reality. However, most had no idea Castro would become a totalitarian dictator who would destroy the island of Cuba.
The film's portrayal of what happened to Fico's family was right on the money. Many Cuban families were split apart during that turbulent period. Some families were politically divided, others were separated by the exile of family members who fled Fidel's regime. My family was no exception to this rule. The revolution made enemies of friends, and even family members. Fidel was, and continues to be, a dividing force for many Cubans on both sides of the Florida straits.
I just finished watching the movie at 11:15PM and suddenly I have a hankering for a "media noche." For those of you not familiar with it, a "media noche" is a snack size petite Cuban sandwich named after midnight. I wish I could just slip into my red dress and go dancing in old Havana. Beny More and his Afro-Cuban band is a favorite of mine. What I'd give to have seen him perform live on the stage. Oh, how I wish I had a time machine to go back to that era!
On a more serious note, I noticed another reviewer from Rhode Island evaluated the film on a political level. That individual said that "Fidel!" offers a more 'balanced' portrayal of Castro's Revolution and Batista's regime. If there is one film that is truly transparently propagandistically about Cuba, I'd say that "Fidel!" would definitely be 'it.' Needless to say that it is a pro-socialist-pro-communist documentary romanticizing one of history's most ignominious totalitarian dictators.
I wonder if the reviewer has ever lived in Cuba, or if s/he is truly familiar with Cuba's history. Does this reviewer know that many members of the Cuban aristocracy financed Fidel's rise to power? Just as it was portrayed in The Lost City, some members of the upper class not only paid with their wealth but with the blood of their sons and daughters. Not all rich Cuban families owed their societal standing to Batista. Many wealthy Cuban families had been landowners since before Cuba gained independence from Spain. Batista had staged a military coup d'état in 1952, removing the prior elected leader, Carlos Prío. The brutalities committed under Batista's regime were real, but not nearly as horrific as the atrocities perpetrated against those who dared oppose Fidel Castro.
Movie Review: Subjective 5 Stars
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm a big fan of the musician Cachao, whom Andy Garcia worked with a lot before Cachao passed away. Really, Andy was the guy who brought Cachao back from semi-retirement to make what are a couple of masterpieces of Cuban music, See Cachao, Master Sessions Vol. 1 and 2.
I can't say I've ever been a big fan of Andy Garcia though.
That being said, I absolutely loved this movie, everything about it. I'm not Cuban, I'm a Yankee, about as WASP as they come, and I have little interest in arguing about the Cuban revolution or Fidel Castro or Batista, or anyone else in Cuba for that matter. Whatever arguments people want to carry on about Cuba and the revolution, have at it.
The funny thing is that I didn't find The Lost City to be a very political movie. Knowing Andy Garcia and his passion for all things Cuban, I would have expected him to throw in a bunch of anti-communist propaganda. He didn't (no matter what other reviewers say). If anything, Andy could have thrown in a lot of ugly scenes depicting all the awful things the communists really did do in Cuba after the revolution. But he didn't.
To me, this is a movie by a guy who truly loves the country and culture he comes from, and he just wanted to make a movie to express it. He does so wonderfully. He depicts Cuba during the revolution through his characters, and doesn't really take any unfair swipes at anybody on any side.
This movie isn't a deep 'masterpiece' by a 'great' film-maker. Sometimes those kind of movies are terrible movies no matter who wrote, directed or starred in them. I can remember walking out of an Oscar front runner 'great' movie, laughing with my ex-wife (who graduated with a film degree from USC), about how 'God-awful that movie was.' I don't need perfect structure. If you have any experience reading the books of, or watching the movies of, great storytellers, you will have noticed that they make mistakes, try things that don't work, and hit rough patches all the time. So what.
What I loved most about The Lost City is the way the actors are treated. Andy Garcia lets everybody, every character, every actor just shine in this movie. He has an obvious affection not only for Cuba, but for actors and the arts of storytelling and movie making. His affection jumps off the screen in every scene.
I wish Andy would appear in a few more blockbusters so he can save up some money, make a movie, and tell us another story like this one.
Movie Review: Beautiful Movie
Summary: 5 Stars
In watching The Lost City, you have to evaluate it on two levels. One is the purely cinematic approach, or simply is it a good movie, and the other is from a historical/political statement point of view.
As a movie the best parts are the beautiful photography, locations, costumes and music. It really is a treat for the eyes and the ears. Is it long? yes it's long. But after seeing the film for the second time, I can't see where there was room for a lot of trimming.
Overall the acting in the film was good, with some weak spots. As a movie it's definitely worth seeing and the film doesn't deserve a lot of the negative reviews it's gotten. I suspect those have more to do with the political/historical aspects of the film which I referred to before.
This film will offend a lot of people that have bought into the idea of Fidel Castro as a benevolent dictator and Che Guevara as a righteous revolutionary. This film exposes them for the cruel opportunists that they are/were.
The film makes no bones about the need to remove the (then) dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista but also unequivocally shows that what happened next was far worse for all involved.
Some have criticized this film for not showing "the grinding poverty" of the masses in pre-Castro Cuba. There's a reason for that. There wasn't that much of it back then. The Cuban revolution was one led and funded by the middle and upper classes and supported by intellectuals throughout the island. They wanted democracy not a totalitarian dictatorship.
Cabrera-Infante, the screenplay author does a great job in showing us the differing approaches to getting rid of Batista by putting one of Fico's (Andy Garcia) brothers in the 26th of July movement (Castro's group) and another in the Revolutionary Directorate (a competing revolutionary group). In the end Castro's group seizes power and squashes opposition. In other words, the bad guys won.
You'll need to see the movie to judge it's value as a work of art, but this movie goes a long way toward telling the untold (or rather unlistened-to) story of what happened and is happening in Cuba.
Movie Review: Freedom. What an intangible and fleeting idea. An idea that can only be fully savored by those that have been deprived of it.
Summary: 5 Stars
My eyes welled when I watched Bill Murray telling Andy about Lady Liberty. I relived the first time I visited the Statue of Liberty.
I left Cuba in 1970. I was a [...] kid whose childhood's innocence was rudely awakened by the brutalities of the Castro regime on the eastern part of the island.
This movie tugged at my heart and brought back a lot of memories. The constant "look over your shoulder, whisper in half tones" behavior instilled by the constant fear of reprisal-either prison time or death squad.
The fear that within your own family or in school there could be repercussions if you said the wrong thing.
I remembered the time when a neighborhood party was hosted by the CDR (Committee for the Defense of the Revolution) where a Guantanamo Bay tower guard was praised for shooting his partner guard as he started crossing into no man's land toward the U.S. side. He had just asked him if he wanted to defect also, and he replied no.
I remembered the time when two fourteen year old kids were sentenced to death by firing squad for promoting a high school mutiny against a forced six month stint at a farm labor camp.
I remembered the rumors that spread in my town after russian- made MiGs strafed and killed a boat full of people- a whole family, that wanted to escape to Guantanamo.
The scene at the airport where Andy's luggage was being searched brought back the memory at Jose Marti airport in Havana, as we were leaving Cuba. A guard screamed at the group boarding the plane "Worms, whoever turns around and waves good bye is staying!" My mother left Cuba and did not see my grandmother for twenty five years. I will never forget her heartfelt cries as we left.
Andy did an excellent job in capturing this fearful atmosphere in this magnificent movie. This is a must see for anyone, in particular those that have no knowledge or have misled notions of what really goes on in Cuba. In addition, it has a wealth of music that encapsulates the variety and richness of cuban culture.
Movie Review: A Carribean Dr Zhivago
Summary: 5 Stars
Andy Garcia's Lost City is very much a tour de force on the Cuban Revolution of 1958 and how that country "achieved" the condition it's been in ever since. In this respect, the film compares very well with David Lean's treatment of Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago. Apart from the obvious differences in time and place, Garcia's work centers its setting on the lost Cuban cabaret scene, with musical and dance numbers that will almost certainly never be matched. This fills the same function as Lean's majestic cinematography of Moscow and the Urals in Zhivago and in each case the focal point really is the film.
That isn't to say though that it is lacking in fine performances. Most of the Hispanic actors other than Garcia may not be particularly familiar to North American audiences, but the acting is excellent in a project where many of them worked for scale plus in a labor of love. As might be expected, director/star Garcia leads the way with a performance full of subtleties of expression that I quite frankly thought was beyond him. By way of comparison, the very best aspects of his performance in the last third of Godfather III are distilled to quality and sensitivity a hundred times better than he showed there.
Ordinarily, I would expect such a fine performance to be a launching pad for many more mature roles than he's played to date, but this doesn't take into account the great risk Garcia took in producing a film hostile to Castro and communists. Undoubtedly this puts him at great risk in the Twenty First Century world of Hollywood, where those figures are considered heroes, if not secular saints. In fact, Garcia is quite open in stating that he was forced to go outside of the normal Hollywood funding sources in order to finance The Lost City. One can only hope that such a finely crafted film and performance will be appropriately recognized and not punished in the Marxist milieu of the American film industry. The Lost City is a product of great courage of conviction, which is rewarded in almost every aspect of the performances.