José Martí, also a movie character
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- Cinema
- 04 / 05 / 2010
After years of research and hard-work the movie Martí, el ojo del canario faces the public. Fernando Pérez, moved by the life of the Cuban hero, screened him from a very personal perspective.
The director of films as memorable as Madagascar and Suite Habana said about it: “I chose the infancy and adolescence because that is the stage in which his personality was formed. It is “my” movie. That’s why I say this is not a biography, though it is actually based on history and respects it a lot. It is a subjective vision, my interpretation of that history and that man. Otherwise, I would have made a documentary”.
In this new work Fernando Pérez leaves aside the rather experimental line he showed in Madrigal and develops a simpler plot, dramatically “right”, in which an intimate vision of the great Cuban intellectual, one of the most influential ones in the Cuban and Latin American culture of the 19th century, prevails.
The crew was composed by Gloria María Cossío and Alejandro Gutiérrez, in charge of the research. Erick Grass, who was once again responsible for the art direction, which plays a crucial role in the historic rebuilding and staging of the private matters of the boy’s family environment.
Raúl Pérez Ureta, - National Award for Cinema winner in 2010-, is the performer of the excellent photography work that thrills everybody through and through.
Edition was made by Julia Yip, and music by the outstanding composer Edesio Alejandro. All of them are usual members of the team that works with Fernando.
For almost two hours Martí is a child that dreams, suffers, opens his eyes to teenage sexuality, fights to defeat fear, and devotes himself to the most important task in his life, the freedom of his homeland, for which he sacrificed everything.
The performance of Damián Rodríguez, playing the child, brings a lot of sensitiveness to the character with a languid and smart look, which disapproves of injustice.
The teenage years are taken care of by Daniel Romero, a student from the National Art School, with a look that reflects the inner world of that boy who was a diligent, knowledge-craving student and a precocious writer.
The gray, blue, and dun tones color the canvas of the époque and bring to mind the sorrows of the man and his homeland –the slave-based Cuba from the 19th century- from José Martí’s outlook, some times sad, and some others vivacious.
Erick Grass, working again as the art director in a movie by Fernando, had the difficult mission of making that in each scene the family environment of our National Hero could be perceived. “The film is rather tonal than chromatic, there prevail the gray, blue, dun, and pastel colors typical at the time”, this creator, who achieves to present an evocative piece in spite of the little resources, has said.
After doing a lot of thinking, Fernando Pérez decided to take the childhood and teenage years into fiction. “Martí as an adult would have been too immense and complex. I believe Martí was ahead of everything in his day”, he confessed in a recent interview.
El ojo del canario, as Pérez sees it, is a “classical movie in the drama building sense”; but that doesn’t mean it is simple. To get to that beautiful, almost-two-hours story there was a lot of research done through the press of the time, the books, and the old constructions from the 19th century.
In this search, together with the filmmaker, there were María Cossío and Alejandro Gutiérrez. With that amount of information, Fernando assumed the scriptwriting: “I decided to write the script on my own, for the first time, because I realized that what I was trying to express was a very personal and intimate viewpoint on the hero”.
Another huge job was looking for the main characters. They had to find actors to portray Martí as a kid and as a boy, who looked like the hero. After a hard casting work, Damián Rodríguez and Daniel Romero were chosen; both of them were able to speak with their eyes.
The excellent photography was carried out by Raúl Pérez Ureta, National Award for Cinema winner in 2010. The edition was made by Julia Yip, and the music is from Edesio Alejandro. All of them are members of the team that has been working with Fernando for years.
The crew attained what could seem impossible: to portray a living Martí. He is a kid that dreams or gets stunned by some woman’s breasts, a fact that leads him to masturbation under his sheets, within the quiet night.
A boy that is afraid of a dog’s barking and fights to overcome his fear, or sees himself be beaten by a stronger classmate. He is the teenager who was almost forced to shout: Long live Spain!. But he is also the diligent student, the precocious writer, the indulgent brother,the patriot in the making, all those things we know by the biographies or the approaches to the Cuban National Hero.
With the special sensibility that characterizes it, in the script and the actor direction, Fernando Pérez got to show a tough Don Mariano (Rolando Brito), sometimes even cruel, but fair, while Doña Leonor (Broselianda Hernández) is the understanding and sweet mother within the natural urges of a progenitor that perceives his son is in danger.
Julio César Ramírez’s Mendive is as convincing as Manuel Porto’s Salustián, both playing the formation role of the child-adolescent that seduces them with his intelligence, literary skills, and Cuban identification.
Fernando set as a goal, as he has commented, to expose how the personality of this kid (that got later on to be an exceptional being) was formed, and he stated: “it is not a biography of the Apostle or anything like that, but just a spiritual itinerary”.
And so he did. Each phrase that was said in the movie, either about freedom or love, has the value of remaining fresh. It is a film that can be appreciated anywhere, but for the Cubans it is a work that gets us closer to the most universal of us, that says how much we still have left to fulfill his ideas.
The film had its world premiere at Guadalajara’s Film Festival, and was presented in the Cuban province named Camagüey within the program of the Criticism Workshop.
Every time he is going to take up a new work, Fernando says it is more complex than the previous one. This has actually been by far, not only because of its conception, but also for its brilliant production, portraying an époque from which they respected even the muddy streets that got dresses and suits dirty.
This comes together with the biggest challenge: to give us a believable, close, not-cartoonish Martí, and also to illustrate the integrity of a man with no accurate time.
By Yanelis Abreu
Source: Cubanow.net
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