Film: Memorias del Subdesarrollo
Director: Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
Country: Cuba
Released: August 1968
Runtime: 97 minutes
Genre: Drama
Studio: ICAIC
Influenced: Sara Gómez, Arturo Ripstein, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Pedro Almodóvar, Lucrecia Martel
Based on a novel of the same name written by Edmundo Desnoes, Memorias del Subdesarrollo tells the story of Sergio, a bourgeois intellectual who decides to remain in Havana after the Cuban revolution. He struggles with his identity, feeling out of place in the new Cuba, and questioning his role as a member of the privileged class. Sergio is haunted by memories of his past life, and the film explores the tensions between the old and the new, the individual and the collective, the local and the global. Early in the movie, Sergio mentions Picasso and how he was supposed to send a dove to Cubans to mount on the statue where the imperial eagle was taken down in Havana after independence. "It's real easy to be a communist and a millionaire in Paris", he says, an insightful criticism of the communist fellow travellers in Europe, making clear how complex and nuanced Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's film is in terms of its political outlook.
What's also remarkable about Alea's film is how it shifts so rapidly in terms of tone and genre. Suddenly at around the 20 minute mark, the movie changes gear from languid melancholy reflection to hard-hitting documentary, focusing on long-standing development issues in Cuba such as malnutrition. The film is a study of the legacy of colonialism, and the ways in which the global economic system perpetuates poverty and inequality in the developing world. Sergio's position as a member of the bourgeois elite allows him to see the stark disparities between the rich and the poor in Cuba, and he struggles with his own complicity in this system. Sergio also self-indulgently says it's impossible to find cultured and intelligent women in Cuba as they spend all their energy adapting to the challenging times; he also arrogantly says he tries to live like a European and feels a constant sense of disappointment, calling Cuban women "underdeveloped" too. Alea is clearly poking fun at his bourgeois pretensions.
Memorias del Subdesarrollo also explores the tensions between Cuba and the United States, and the ways in which the Cold War influenced politics and culture in Latin America. Another important theme in the film is the tension between individualism and collectivism. Sergio is a deeply individualistic character and the film explores his struggle to find his place in the new Cuba. He is torn between his desire for personal fulfilment and his responsibility to the collective, i.e. Cuban society. The film suggests that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is not just a personal one, but a larger cultural and political issue in post-revolutionary Cuba.
One of the key innovations of Memorias del Subdesarrollo is its use of documentary-style footage of events like the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis, as well as interviews with real people on the streets of Havana. This blurring of the line between fiction and reality creates a sense of authenticity and immediacy, and allows the film to explore the complex political and social issues facing Cuba in the aftermath of the revolution. Nowadays it is regarded as one of the most important films to emerge from Latin America in the 1960s, praised for its complex and nuanced portrayal of post-revolutionary Cuba and its exploration of the larger issues of underdevelopment. It's also highly engaging – by no means is this an indulgent arthouse film – and funny too.
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