The following is one of the entries from my list of the 100 greatest films (through 2006) from Africa, Latin America & the Caribbean, which I invite you to visit on this site if you haven’t already done so. — Dennis
The final entry of a trilogy begun with The Other Francisco (1975) and Slave Hunter (1976), Maluala is in the mold of Gillo Pontecorvo’s Queimada (Burn!, 1969)—but without the Brandopiness. Fiercely beautiful, Sergio Giral’s film fictionalizes slave revolts in Cuba in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Its protagonist, called Gallo, leading an army of runaways, petitions the Spanish colonial government for freedom and land; he and his followers are met with brutal reprisals. Their settlement tucked away in eastern mountains, Gallo and the others come to presage Castro, “Che” Guevara and their anti-Batista guerrilla forces in the 1950s. The film suggests that the latter revolution has brought to fruition the earlier movement by Cuba’s most oppressed individuals—a connection that Giral, a black Cuban himself, draws with heartfelt conviction. Indeed, the film ends with a freeze frame that perfectly expresses the historical weight that Giral wishes to bring to bear. After engineering a massacre of blacks, the colonial Spanish general—Gallo’s nemesis—is shown surrounded by a taunting crowd of the dispossessed. They represent the future as much as the present, and the freeze frame captures the general’s howl and bulging eyes, slyly anticipating the end to the power upon which the colonial forces then so ruthlessly relied. This man embodies injustices perpetrated against the Cuban people; with hindsight, then, the film looks forward to his getting his comeuppance. The film’s heightened style—its rich colors, music and touches of primitive folklore—helps the connection drawn between the black slave revolt and Castro’s later defeat of the Batista government appear almost mystical. In this, the film owes something to Battleship Potemkin (1925), where a failed Russian revolution looks ahead to the successful one that has already since occurred. Like Eisenstein’s masterpiece, Maluala is a national epic.
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MALUALA (Sergio Giral, 1979)
The following is one of the entries from my list of the 100 greatest films (through 2006) from Africa, Latin America & the Caribbean, which I invite you to visit on this site if you haven’t already done so. — Dennis
The final entry of a trilogy begun with The Other Francisco (1975) and Slave Hunter (1976), Maluala is in the mold of Gillo Pontecorvo’s Queimada (Burn!, 1969)—but without the Brandopiness. Fiercely beautiful, Sergio Giral’s film fictionalizes slave revolts in Cuba in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Its protagonist, called Gallo, leading an army of runaways, petitions the Spanish colonial government for freedom and land; he and his followers are met with brutal reprisals. Their settlement tucked away in eastern mountains, Gallo and the others come to presage Castro, “Che” Guevara and their anti-Batista guerrilla forces in the 1950s. The film suggests that the latter revolution has brought to fruition the earlier movement by Cuba’s most oppressed individuals—a connection that Giral, a black Cuban himself, draws with heartfelt conviction. Indeed, the film ends with a freeze frame that perfectly expresses the historical weight that Giral wishes to bring to bear. After engineering a massacre of blacks, the colonial Spanish general—Gallo’s nemesis—is shown surrounded by a taunting crowd of the dispossessed. They represent the future as much as the present, and the freeze frame captures the general’s howl and bulging eyes, slyly anticipating the end to the power upon which the colonial forces then so ruthlessly relied. This man embodies injustices perpetrated against the Cuban people; with hindsight, then, the film looks forward to his getting his comeuppance. The film’s heightened style—its rich colors, music and touches of primitive folklore—helps the connection drawn between the black slave revolt and Castro’s later defeat of the Batista government appear almost mystical. In this, the film owes something to Battleship Potemkin (1925), where a failed Russian revolution looks ahead to the successful one that has already since occurred. Like Eisenstein’s masterpiece, Maluala is a national epic.
This entry was posted on November 15, 2007 at 6:53 pm and is filed under Formal Capsule Film Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.