The Lost City

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.

This is an artistic masterpiece, in terms of the story, the plot, the music, cinematography, fashion of that epoc in Cuba, settings sceenery,etc. The blend of the background-forground music with the action is amazing. Even though fiction, the historic value is remarkable: representation of events, sequence of events, magnitud of events, vingnets of issues and characteristics of the process, representation of the Cuban spirit, etc.

I'm a 65 year-old Cuban woman who lived through that historic time. I'm a psychologist, mother of seven children , all successfull college graduates and grandmother of 19 children.

I'm very greatful to Andy Garcia for the gift of this movie.

Maria T. Carbonell, Montgomery Village, Maryland

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For many of us who have lived through our own "Lost City," watching this film was a bittersweet experience. Andy Garcia has given us an artful, albeit realistic and truthful expression of the tragedy that befell the people and beautiful Island of Cuba. Not only was the movie entertaining and captivating, it was beautifully filmed, evoking images of a time and place we can never go back to. The casting was brilliant and the acting very compelling---you could tell that for many of them the movie was "personal." Amazing that this film made it to the screen given its honest portrayal of the brutal architects of the Cuban revolution, particularly Hollywood's darlings, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. I can't help but laugh (although I should cry) every time I see the blissfully ignorant adulation for Che and company...perhaps if more people see the movie they might think twice before sporting their ugly mugs on their t-shirts....way to go Andy!

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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.

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Andy Garcia does a superb job of telling the story of Cuba from the perspective of one family caught in the turmoil of the revolution.

(Spoilers!)

It is the story of one family composed of 3 brothers, one is a musician whose life revolves around his family and his music lounge;one brother is a student at university--it is not clear what the other one's occupation is. Their father is a university professor who believes in Ghandi's philosophy of passive resistance. But one brother is captivated by Fidel Castro and joins the rebels. The other brother is also lured into the political fray and only Andy Garcia's character,

Fico, is apolitical.

There is a parallelism in the break up of the country with the break up of the family. Family affinities are either strengthened or discarded depending on which side of the revolution one chooses to ally one's self with. This is the tragedy that is Cuba--it deposed a bloody dictator with a bloodier one.

Similarly, Fico's love for Aurora (his brother's widow) parallels his love for his Cuba. He loves her and he will love her forever; yet, he has to go away. Aurora chooses to stay in Cuba--she believes that communism is the the road to follow; Fico chooses to leave for New York--freedom is non-negotiable--it holds the highest value in his heart.

Wonderful story telling and directing from Andy Garcia. He presents this heartbreaking story with passion and understanding of its turbulent history. The poem at the end of the film is equally haunting in its beauty...to quote a portion:

"Todo es hermoso y constante, Todo es musica y rezo, Y todo, como el diamante, Antes que luz, es carbon."

(Everything is beautiful and faithful, Everything is music and prayer, And everything--like the diamond, Before it sparkles, is coal.")

Forgive me if I translated it wrong; maybe someone can translate it more accurately and lyrically. But you get the idea.

I really loved watching this film!

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