Buena Vista Social Club
dir. Wim Wenders
Artisan Entertainment

Wim Wenders calls is a musicumentary. I'd call it pretty damn good. Regardless, Wenders directed the Buena Vista Social Club with the light touch that it required. But it isn't Wenders that makes this film worth seeing. It is Compay Segundo, Rubén Gonzålez, Ibrahim Ferrer and all the other Cuban musicians recorded on film. Proving that the Cuban old-heads, and by induction old-heads around the world, can still play.

Ry Cooder, producer or the Buena Vista Social Club, was instrumental in getting these reclusive and disillusioned musicians to record — Ferrer was shining shoes and didn't want to sing again, Gonzalez claimed that he had arthritis when he was first approached by Cooder to record. However much recording and touring Gonzalez and Ferrer are now doing, the movie serves as a wonderful reminder of just how capricious fate is and how quickly luck can change.

Though much of the film is infused with the giddiness of success (it was filmed after the first album had begun to do so well), it is balanced by the ghost of memory and the squalor of Cuba. Often the musicians hadn't played in years or seen one another in decades. They would spend time together trying to remember old songs, which wrote them and whether or not this or that songwriter was still alive.

The flexibility of digital video cameras helped capture candid moments and subtle nuances of performances that are more meaningful for what we have learned about the performers. The camerawork gives the film an immediacy that is rare in movies these days.

Certain staged pieces designed to introduce the musicians are cumbersome, but they are more easily forgiven because of the role the musicians seem to have played in blocking and writing them.

It remains that the musicians seem to have an unassuming and comfortable respect around the camera. This respect affords fleeting glimpses into the souls of these musicians. It makes the music much more meaningful and leaves you wondering whether it is only old age that can bring such patient resolve and dignity.

— Will Schmenner (wdschmen at midway dot uchicago dot edu)