 Buena Vista Social Club (1999) When musician Ry Cooder is found strangled in his hotel room, it's up to super-sleuth Ibrahim Ferrer to solve the crime before all the evidence disappears. Ferrer is against the odds as he battles corrupt police commissioner Ruben Gonzalez and local drug kingpin Compay Segundo while in hot pursuit of the woman (Omara Portuondo) who may – or may not – have committed the heinous act! Wow, I totally want to see that movie. This one, however, is not a mystery whatsoever, but rather a massively charming documentary about the supergroup of Cuban musicians assembled by Ry Cooder for the 1997 album of the same name. Cooder ventured to Havana to record a world music fusion album and ended up recording a traditionalist Cuban folk album that ended up going multiplatinum and winning a bunch of Grammys®. Truly there has been no more winning underdog tale in the cinema since The Bad News Bears Breaking Training, wherein everyone's favorite bunch of rag-tag losers get to play in the Houston Astrodome™. Buena Vista Social Club is a lot like that film, as it features these rag-tag old Cuban musicians playing at Carnegie Hall with much the same comedy and pathos stemming from the country-bumpkin-hits-the-bigtime angle. Unfortunately this film lacks both the strong presence of William Devane and the youthful charm of Jimmy Baio, but on the plus side, it has far fewer bedwetting jokes. In assembling the musicians for the Buena Vista Social Club project, Cooder hit the proverbial jackpot by discovering the Cuban equivalents of Nat King Cole, Thelonious Monk, and Lead Belly in Ibrahim Ferrer, Ruben Gonzalez, and Compay Segundo, respectively. To put it in perspective, imagine you are assembling musicians for an album of traditional American jazz, and you stumble upon Dizzy Gillespie working as a shoe shine, or Art Blakey playing weddings. The old fashioned music in which these Cuban all-stars specialize had all but vanished in the Cuban mainstream, and it took an album as enjoyable and important as the Buena Vista album to make the world realize what it was letting slip away. The Cuban son music is the precursor to salsa, as rhythmic and sexy as salsa but not as aggressive and fast. You might describe my grandmother the same way in comparison to my trashy cousin Paulette. In any case, it is a haunting and captivating music that is given a face (a bunch of faces, actually) by this documentary. The film by and large lets the music do the talking, but I should point out that this is not a film that will only appeal to fans of music – in fact, it seems quite designed to appeal to the musical neophyte while not simplifying or over-explaining what the music is about. This is not a style of music that needs analysis to enjoy. Wenders is smart to just introduce us to the music through our ears, then slowly provide the background story for each of the main participants in the group – journeyman guitarist and singer Eliades Ochoa; Barbarito Torres, who plays the Latinized Arabic instrument the laoud; Omara Portuondo, who of the group had the most genuine fame at the time of the recording; and of course, the three mentioned earlier. Ibrahim Ferrer is the central focus of the film, and he's possibly the most charming documentary subject ever, besides maybe that guy from Brother's Keeper. He's warm, funny, and in possession of one of the greatest voices you'll ever hear. Ruben Gonzalez is an amazing pianist, full of humorous chops and a great sense of showmanship – the scene in which he takes a solo during a concert performance, gets really cookin' and suddenly runs out of keyboard to solo on as he goes higher and higher up the keyboard is one of the big highlights of the film. Then there's mack daddy Compay Segundo, who muses about wanting to try to father his sixth child (he's 90). It's a wonderful cast, full of talented newcomers who this reviewer thinks are gonna go places! The fact that the average age in the band has got to be over 65 only adds to the charm. We also get to meet Ry Cooder, who comes off as an interesting, balanced guy despite an uncanny resemblance to Tom Braidwood from the "X Files."
The only person that really comes across negatively is Cooder's percussionist son Joaquin, who manages to use his 30 seconds of airtime to cram as many pretentious statements as he possibly can into a very short segment. But seeing as he's 20, we'll let it go—I certainly wouldn't want to see myself on film at age 20. Well, actually I did make a movie when I was 20, but it was hardly what you would call a "speaking role"—mainly I give a lot of head and get fisted—so I don't even really count that as a credit in my filmography. It really was more about needing to pay off this loan shark I was heavily indebted to during my serious gambling years. I swear, I can hardly get fisted up to someone's elbow anymore without immediately thinking of how many more tricks I'll have to turn to come up with the money. Then I remember that those days are passed and I just lean forward and enjoy the sweet searing pain. The film is not without its faults—there is a certain coldness to Wenders's approach, and the very end feels a bit hollow with Cooder taking the final bow at Carnegie Hall. I was particularly disappointed that Ry Cooder did not have a righteous guitar duel with Steve Vai, as in the 1986 film Crossroads, and additionally that I was disappointed that Ralph Macchio did not reprise his role as Cooder in this film. (?) But the strengths of the film are substantial, and the subtle infusion of cultural and political images lend a great deal of weight to what otherwise would mainly be a human interest story along the lines of, say, The Bad News Bears Go to Japan. Hopefully this film will gain a wide audience and bring this music and this story to the masses. It would be a shame if it ended up being regarded as a "musical film"instead of a film, as with Stop Making Sense, although I could see how that could happen, seeing as Compay Segundo wears some pretty huge suits.
Review by La Fée |
