Buena Vista Social Club
is as
Good as it Gets
by Mariana Cirne

Imagine what it would feel like to be a star in your time, become old and forgotten, have to shine shoes for a living, then be rediscovered by a powerful admirer and start touring the world again, attracting raving crowds when you expected to be in a rocking chair waiting for it all to end. Too good to be true? Yes, too good indeed - but true, nevertheless. Buena Vista Social Club is exactly this fairy tale. It's a story of elderly Cinderellas rescued from the dungeons of oblivion and brought to the Royal Ball by a fairy godmother going by the name of Ry Cooder. Had this been a fictional screenplay, the most common criticism aimed at it would probably be that it has an overly optimistic view of life. What we see on the screen, as well as the music we hear is, in fact, unbelievable.

Ry Cooder, a successful musician and producer, flew down to Cuba to record an album with Cuban and West African musicians. The Africans were detained in Paris, and he found himself in Havana, in the company of maestro Juan de Marco and no musicians with whom to form a band. Luckily, the godmother had in Juan de Marco something like a magic wand. Through him, Cooder was able to get to know more about the artists that had drawn his attention almost two decades before, and get them all together again. De Marco did a wonderful job of resuscitating veterans who had been away from the front for two, five, even ten years. Some had to be practically dragged in - old, disillusioned, abandoned.

Ibrahim Ferrer, Rubén Gonzalez, Compay Segundo, Pio Leyva, Omara Portuondo, and others, most of them with ages ranging from seventy to ninety, and the energy of teenagers, were gathered in the studio. Just a pinch of magic dust set them on their journey back to the spotlight. Rubén Gonzalez, for instance, one of the most influential pianists of the century in Cuban music, had been away from his instrument for ten years. Well, there he was again, aged eighty, fingers flying around the keyboard at the speed of sound. Ibrahim Ferrer, already in his seventies, perhaps the most fascinating character in this cast of gentle giants, had stopped using his strong, crystalline voice for years. In the first few moments of this documentary, he can be seen in the company of Omara Portuondo, a true diva, performing a marvelous rendition of "Silencio."

The story moves on, told with great sensitivity and tenderness by the delicate artistry of director Wim Wenders. Old people have many stories to tell, and these seniors have stories that are full of music, captivating characters, radical transformations, glories and downfalls. In short, the stuff myths are made of, and as the director himself put it, they all seemed larger than life. And so the movie goes, back and forth from these biographies to recording sessions, to life in Cuba, to triumph in an Amsterdam concert, to total glory at Carnegie Hall. Here, the film culminates with Ibrahim Ferrer in a trance at center stage, facing an endless standing ovation, completely ecstatic...Wim Wenders, no doubt aware of the uniqueness of this moment, was able to capture a rare and wonderful picture of life being gentle.

If I were to give a definition of what success in life is, no example would be better than one very idyllic scene in this documentary. There we see Ry Cooder sitting on a porch of a small house by the sea, smoking a cigar and relaxing in the company of his son Joachim and two other musicians, playing soft music for his pure enjoyment.
Cooder is taking abreak from recording sessions in Havana, where he's working with these geniuses on a wonderful project that was to bring him immense professional satisfaction and, at the same time, benefit a number of people whom might otherwise have been forgotten. That, to me, is as good as life can possibly get.

CineScene 2000