Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 02/15/25

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Saturday, February 15, 2025

One Way or Another (Sara Gómez, 1975)

Cast: Mario Balmaseda, Yolanda Cuéllar, Mario Limonta, Isaura Mendoza, Bobby Carcases, Sarita Reyes, Guillermo Díaz. Screenplay: Julio García Espinosa, Tomás González Péres, Tomás Guitérrez Alea, Sara Gómez. Cinematography: Luis García. Art direction: Roberto Larrabure. Film editing: Iván Arocha. Music: Sergio Vitier.

Sara Gómez's One Way or Another is a clear-sighted docudrama that personifies the attempts of postrevolutionary Cuba to establish a stable, egalitarian state by focusing on a young couple: Yolanda (Yolanda Cuéllar), a schoolteacher, and Mario (Mario Balmaseda), a laborer. Old ways and old attitudes die hard, and Gómez resorts to a wrecking ball smashing into slum buildings as a visual metaphor throughout the film. Though it ends with Yolanda and Mario walking away from the camera arguing, a measure of hope for the couple, and by implication for Cuba, remains. It's a propaganda film with a heart, though the chilly speech and manner of the authorities trying to engineer a new society contrasts sharply with the messy vitality of the daily lives of the Cuban people.