Source Miami Herald
The Lost City, Andy Garcia's earnest, wobbly epic about the Cuban
revolution, is one of the hottest tickets at this year's festival,
and it's hard to imagine the movie finding a more receptive and
appreciative audience than the one awaiting Sunday's sold-out
screening at the Gusman.
But despite the strong emotional connection many Miamians will feel
toward the movie, The Lost City falls far short of the sweep,
complexity and passion it strives for. Garcia, who persevered for
more than a decade to make the picture (he directed, produced and
scored the movie, as well as stars in it) has succumbed to the trap
that often snares filmmakers who spend years trying to realize their
dream project: He's so close to the material, so passionate about
the story he's telling, that he's lost his artistic bearings.
Wildly overlong, underplotted and sometimes just ill-conceived, The
Lost City opens in 1958, during the waning days of Batista's regime,
and centers on Fico (played by Garcia), the owner of a glitzy Havana
nightclub where Beny More and Bola de Nieve are among the regular
headliners. At home, Fico tries to keep the peace between his
revolution-minded brothers Luis (Nestor Carbonell) and Ricardo
(Enrique Murciano) and their father Federico (Tomas Milian), a
university professor who preaches ``passive resistance.''
But the revolutionary forces gathering across the island will not be
quelled. The hothead Ricardo runs off to the Sierra Maestra
mountains to join Castro's swelling army, while Luis participates in
a daring but ill-fated raid on Batista's presidential palace.
Based on a screenplay by the late Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera
Infante, The Lost City illustrates how the revolution fractured
once-inseparable families -- how politics overcame blood ties, with
often tragic results. But the characters feel more like ideological
mouthpieces than real people, constantly spouting euphemisms and
florid writerly phrases (''In Cuba, we have never had darkness at
noon before!'') instead of actual dialogue.
Invoking everything from The Godfather to Casablanca, the movie also
provides Fico with the requisite romantic interest (played by the
beautiful Ines Sastre), but their flat, two-dimensional love story,
which consists mostly of montages of the lovers carefully
photographed in scenic poses, also becomes fodder for the story's
political concerns.
By focusing on an educated, upper-middle class family, The Lost City
does provide a welcome contrast to Hollywood's stereotypical
depictions of Cubans, and the film's portrayal of Che Guevara is a
welcome antidote to the romanticized version seen in The Motorcycle
Diaries. Garcia's Cuban-American perspective on this story is
unmistakable and welcome.
But the prevailing shallowness of the characters, along with the
needlessly busy, overpopulated script (including a disastrous turn
by Bill Murray, improvising madly as an irreverent writer meant to
be Infante's surrogate), keep The Lost City from attaining the epic
dimensions it yearns to reach.