barbarism vs civilization Great movie! It is a must see for people interested in Latin-American or Spanish American Studies.
The Last Supper The movie has an interesting idea that encouraged me to watch it in its entirety. The weakness is the script, with long dialogues that seem disconnected from each other, making the movie seemignly slow and long. The actors are natural and the movie is shot in the perfect background and environemnt.
A Parable about the Meaning of Freedom in 18th Century Cuba Some movies have great stories or great writing. This has both. A plantation slaveowner convinces (himself) that he is moral and benevolent. Imagining himself in the Christ role, the slaveowner stages a formal dinner - a last supper - by inviting 12 black slaves to dine with him. Why stage this dinner? The slave master believes the blacks will thank him for his "goodness." Instead, the plantation owner lets loose the Africans' passions, hatred, and desperation for freedom. A slave revolt follows. In response, the slave owner forgets all about Christ as he ruthlessly hunts and punishes the rebellious blacks...however one slave evades capture and wins his bid for freedom. This is a unique and provocative film about the African experience in Cuba.
A sinister metaphor! From the times I watched Viridiana with all its wholeness expresiveness, I had never watched another striking Latin American movie made with such fierceness and dark poetry. The last supper is nor more neither less, a parable, a powerful and sad story that describes the slow decay process around a family immersed in their ancient glories, unable to asimilate and understand what's going on outside of their geografic limits. Gutierrez Alea gave us the super masterpiece of the Latin American cinma: Memories of the underdevelopment, a merciless portrait about the crude reality of Cuba in 1968. After having been a public fact and having received all the honors, he insisted to return with his well know bitterness from several angles, and finally in 1976 he decided to get into the soul, and the ancestral cuban codes: the religious sincretism, the racism, the superb, the old glories and the absolute lack of respect for the human being, and we will be able to watch all those aspects throughout this outstanding picture. The sequence in the Supper when the master decide to join all his slaves to enjoy a dinner will become a true hell after the hidden spirits appear after drinking wine. Add that powerful statement pronounced by the leader of the slaves whn he masks with a pig head and says: "One datty the lie died the thruth while it was sleeping and since then the body of the truth walks around the world with the head of the untrue" still resounds in my mind and spirit. Go for this unusual and strong film.
Bitter Truths This film exemplifies what Christian hypocrites did to decimate the African world-view. My favorite scenes involved storytelling, done in the traditional African manner, by different slaves. Christianity was a great tool of oppression and domination, and this film shows it.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Tailipoe
Trevor
