The most recent international success of Cuban cinema is titled Melaza and just arrived in Havana premiere screens after a long wait. Banner of young and independent film productions produced by the 5th. Avenue Productions (in charge of the memorable Juan of the Dead), the film brings together a group of inexperienced film professionals from writer-director, Carlos Lechuga, recently graduated from the International School of Film and Television of San Antonio de los Baños to producers Claudia Calvino and Inti Herrera, editor Luis Ernesto Donas, or the protagonists, Yuliet Cruz and Armando Miguel Gomez. And precisely the actors are a key part of this love story between a man and a woman determined to survive decently, in the difficult circumstances imposed by the closure of the sugar industry.
It is difficult to find in the Cuban audiovisual industry another work with such sensitivity for the beauty of the reeds swaying in the wind, the firebreak that divides the greenery, and the palm trees or the small town surrounding the sugar mill which are Cuban primal and atavistic emblems. Also appear the abandonment and ruin of a sugar mill closed indefinitely. As renowned documentary deMoler (2004, Alejandro Ramirez ) but with greater emphasis on the sublimation of grace and beauty under pressure, Melaza examines survival modes of thousands , perhaps millions of Cubans who attended the astounding suspension of an economic activity understood as an economic, political and cultural part of the nation for at least a couple of centuries . The resulting disorientation and distress are central themes of this questioning and appreciable debut, but overall, the picture painted by the film seems more like mid -nineties that the second decade of the century when certain symptoms are observed of recovery in the sugar industry .
Close to productions such as Ticket to Paradise (2011, Gerardo Chijona) or Penumbras (released in 2012 under the direction of Charlie Medina, and certainly has Carlos Lechuga script) Melaza carries the most vivid representation of dignity (along moral disaster that some calls “crisis of values ” ) and unveils the infamous and reducing essence of all material misery. And the main strength of the film is to reveal the bitter truths and ethical failures left in the bottom of a polychromatic image and friendly consciously aware of the Cuban countryside and of the very photogenic protagonists.
Although some illustrated viewers are heard saying that the movie is too cute to be pessimistic , and too disillusioned to please everyone , the writer-director and his colleagues wanted to disassociate themselves from the vocation of being miserable and ruinous (which dominates certain sector of Cuban cinema when talking about contemporary issues ) and also try to withdraw from the persistent tradition of Cuban cinema , always oscillating between the tragic and the humorous melodramatic ” to dig ” as some call movies or TV shows that allude veiled criticism to life of this in Cuba .
Carlos Lechuga separates himself from his first film of expeditious purposes like uncompromising provoke laughter or recharge the helpless despair of a troubled spectator. The audience for this movie, will surely be numerous, must make an effort to go through the tragedy and humor in a fragmentary narrative construction at times, conceived in tone patterned episodes so diverse that sometimes are paradoxical, and somewhat disjointed, within a line devoted to describing anecdotal evidence or the challenges this young industrious and very tense unhappy couple is facing with apathy and stagnation which dominates the batey (town in a sugar mill).
In his previous short film The Bathers (2010) awarded with a Coral in Havana, Lechuga describes the itinerary of a swimming coach and his players, who revolted against the contingency of the empty pool and widespread mess. Melaza rejoins tragicomic situation of the swimmers, and perhaps inspire the cinematic style mocking of Juan Carlos Tabio, Daniel Diaz Torres or the comedies of Tomas Gutierrez Alea, to mock bureaucracy, empty propaganda, dogmatism and assumed wrong slogans. And then, through his perhaps too stunning photography, he presents the elegy of the rights and wrongs of a couple refused to tatters or nullity, people determined to face crises and downtime, and fight like lions to protect their family and what remains of their dignity.
Molasses is one of the recent Cuban films (along with El cuerno de la abundancia o La película de Ana) that cares and covers topics such concrete and urgent as certain illegal activities, the salary is not enough, the illegal sale of beef, the dwindling share of the winery, and the problem of “putting a plate of food every day at the table”, as one of the damaged characters says. To the unquestionable candor of this film, you have to add virtues as the ability to create beauty by the director, build suspense, and propose the viewer questions whose answers are offering along a circle whose dramatic epilogue recalls the prologue. And so it is a bitter film by necessity, frank decision of its makers.
