Last Friday, day of investigaciones independientes, I found myself in the world of Cuban film on 23rd between Calles 10 y 12. Here the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC) is located, with its many offices and archives, joined to a cine de arte, “Charlie Chaplin.” Across the street is a café and gallery named after Juan Carlos Tabío and Tomás Gutierrez Alea’s popular film Fresa y Chocolate. I had come to start doing some digging about where I could find information related to the history of movie theatres in Havana. After teaming up with a student from the ISA, I decided to focus my research this semester on the socio-historic trends that caused many Havana theatres to close during the Special Period. Unfortunately, without proper authorization I wasn’t able to access much information, but I did stop by the Charlie Chaplin to see what was showing later that evening. I was excited to see that it was a newer film (2014) by my favorite Cuban director, Fernando Pérez, called La Pared de las Palabras. I’d heard nothing of the film and came in with no expectations, even a little wary because of the small size of the audience. I came out crying, trembling, thinking, and most of all, hoping.
In the film, Jorge Perugorría plays Luis, a mentally handicapped man whose disability prevents him from communicating with those around him. His mother has dedicated her life to caring for him, while the other members of his household, a traveling grandmother and artist brother, have found methods of escape to avoid confronting the painful reality of their family. Luis spends weekdays living at the state mental asylum, where the challenges of living in Cuba are ever-present, such as running out of petroleum or the lack of proper garbage disposal. The other patients represent a marginalized population, or those who don’t fit into the picture painted by the socialist government. Pérez finds a critical voice in Orquídea, a disturbed patient who claims to be a revolutionary, but criticizes government abuses. On the weekends, Luis’s mother Elena brings him home to spend time with his family. After his love interest Maritza, another patient with Down syndrome, gives him a seed for making maracas, he spends these weekends at home tortured by his inability to free the seed from the box where his mother has locked it up. His inability to communicate, symbolic of the restrictions to free expression within Cuba, prevents him from being able to plant the seed and let it grow.
His brother’s art symbolizes the need for escaping censorship by employing a form of subtle criticism. Much to the chagrin of the bureaucratic type who runs the mental institution, a mural in the front hall full of revolutionary propaganda is taken down to be replaced by a piece by Luis’s brother. When asked what he thinks the painting represents, he replies, “the sea,” to which the artist says something along the lines of, “It can mean different things depending on who is viewing it.” It is clearly meaningful for the patients at the institution, who are shown viewing the painting with emotion; one of the patients cries silently. We don’t see what the work looks like until the last scene, where one of the patients walks up to the canvas, pricks his finger on a fish hook, and we realize that the sea is made up of thousands of nails, bent over to look like waves. On one section of the painting, a few hooks stand out. The camera zooms in on the hooks as an echoed voice-over begins to whisper phrases like, “They prohibited it…” as the credits start to roll. I interpreted this to be representative of the dangers of free expression in Cuba and the forces of repression that act to prohibit it.
The film would have been moving and powerful in any context, but viewing it in Havana with a Cuban audience that reacted to various components of the film made it a richer experience. They laughed at the hardships caused by shortages and transportation and they cried and shook at the haunting ending. Walking out of the theatre, one woman leaned on my shoulder and said twice, “What a film.” As he has with his other movies, Fernando Pérez has achieved a moving depiction of the beauty and the struggle of everyday people in Cuba. By focusing on a marginalized population with a limited amount of expression, he portrays the frustration faced by Cubans who try to speak out.
Jorge Perugorría plays Luisito in La Pared de las Palabras