Buena Vista Social Club (1999)

In 1996, Ry Cooder and others assembled forgotten veteran Cuban musicians to form the Buena Vista Social Club. The original Club has long since gone. This movie has their recent performances. Individuals are interviewed about their struggles during tough times and their music.This is a time capsule in more than one way. It recalls the time when Cuba is starting to reach America. It's the hesitant start of a political thaw. The music itself is a throwback to an earlier time period. The musicians' stories are another throwback to another era. It can get repetitive as each musician gets his own section. The music is great. It's touching and funny when the men visit NYC for the first time. That is yet another time capsule as they look out onto the twin towers. This is a fine documentary.

"Buena Vista Social Club" is a 100-minute movie from 1999, so it will soon have its 20th anniversary. But sadly this also means that most of the people you see in here have died already because they were already pretty old when this film got made. But first things first. The writer and director is German filmmaker Wim Wenders, but if you know a bit about him, you also know that there is always a multi-cultural touch to his films and the result here is that, despite one of the producing countries being Germany, there is no German language in this film, but it is all in English and Spanish. This is the story of a bunch of fairly old Cuban musicians who were pretty famous when they were younger, but turned into oblivion in the last decades. Nick Gold and Wim Wenders reunite them (the ones still alive) with their project here and they make music again together, such as Compay Segundo, the most known from the bunch perhaps.The result of this is a music documentary that won many many awards all over the planet and was also nominated for an Oscar (first nomination for Wenders), where it lost to a political documentary about the Olympic Games 1972. But you could call this film here also a political documentary as the political developments in Cuba in the last 50 years or more were frequent and constant and relevant in terms of global politics and there are many references in it from start to finish. If you have more of an interest into the country of Cuba from the political perspective, then you will certainly enjoy this film even more than I did. This does not mean of course that I did not enjoy it. The music is pretty nice, catchy and fun to listen to and the old guys with their quirks and all the stories and anecdotes they tell are equally fun to listen to. i enjoyed the watch and even if I would not call it a great film, it was thoroughly entertaining and it is (in terms of the subject) exactly what one would expect from Wenders. Worth checking out.

More than a beautiful musical movie, I would classify this picture as a documentary. Who hasn't heard about Cuba's legendary Buenavista Social Club?? The story is nothing more than a recreation of the now aging stars of this club, back in the middle of the past century. Two main aspects can be judged here: The poverty of these in their native Cuban environment, and their joy of life that permits them to be happy even with all their limitations, and the contrasts they encounter while traveling to the USA for a presentation at the Carnegie Hall back in July 1998. It is a very shocking impact to see them go from their impoverished surroundings to the fascination of New York, where they now realize that this is where the other half of the world lives. The magic of the picture itself is brought to a sudden stop when one realizes that even in our 21st Century there can be so contrasting differences between human beings living in different parts of the world. Regardless of this sudden awakening to reality, the picture is beautiful and transports us back in time.

In a tribute to the spirit of Cuba and in reference to a dance hall that has long since gone, a group of elderly Cuban musicians to record an album together. Many of the musicians either left Cuba before Castro or were expelled or escaped once he took control. Each artist has a story to tell and they tell them while we follow the group perform a show and putting together their album, leading to the show at Carnegie Hall in New Yok on 1st July 1998.Although it is not something I listen to a lot, I do quite like the beat and the rhythm of music from Cuba – it has a certain style to it that is unique to that country and it is very easy to listen to or to dance to. For this reason I decided to watch this film although I also had hopes that it would be interesting as a documentary of sorts as well. In one regard the film really works and has plenty of great music performed live by a variety of artists, some of whom I had heard of but the majority I had not. It is very easy to listen to and would almost work as background music if you doing something else. This is punctuated with contributions from the artists who are filmed walking around Cuba or sitting in their homes talking about themselves.These bits tend to lack structure and are a bit lesser than I had hoped they would be. They were still interesting mainly because those involved seem to have a life experience behind them and are interesting just to listen to for a while. The problem for me was that, even as I was watching it, I felt that there were bigger stories behind them that would have acted well as a historical frame for the rest of the film and been for interest to the audience; although maybe the assumption was that anyone watching this film would already have a good working knowledge of Cuba. Despite that I didn't think that I had learned a great deal from the film even if I had been able to listen to a couple of the artists chatting and had been engaged by what they had been saying.Overall this is a cool film that is worth seeing for the music and the chance to listen to some very pleasant and rather inspiring elderly characters who all seem to have the spirit of 20 year olds in them. It may annoy some that the film never really steps behind the stories to provide a bit of a historical frame for the audience – it would have made it better for me if it had but it was still worth seeing nonetheless.