“Waiting
for Fidel” a 1974 documentary by Michael Ruppo is at first a glance about different
political cultures, a country in the grasp of a new government and a
documentary crew’s elusive chance to gain an interview with Fidel Castro. The
crew consisting of Former Premier Joseph Smallwood, T.V and Radio owner Geoff
Stirling and director Michael Ruppo representing three opposing viewpoints
which were succinctly summed up in this New York Times review: “.His trip to
Cuba is taken in the company of two antagonists. One is Joseph Smallwood, a
former Premier of Nova Scotia, and a lifelong Socialist with a bubbling
enthusiasm for the new Cuba. The other is Geoffrey Stirling, a self-made
millionaire who is financing the trip and who wields a fierce suspicion of what
he is seeing[1].”
However as the film progresses it becomes apparent the interview isn’t the only
thing they are failing to grasp. By examining the directing style, camera work,
editing and sound in a selection of specific scenes, this essay will prove how
the Canadians crew’s unapologetic and unwavering view point of Cuban life
completely clouds their opinion and understanding of these people; in the end,
the waiting becomes not for Fidel but for understanding in the complex backdrop
of the cold war.
A plane suspended in midflight whilst air
traffickers and pilots talk in the background is the first thing the audience
sees and hears; this also is the main counterpoint of the film. A society of
select individuals locked in isolated rooms built on trust, understanding and
communication elected to maintain the safety of the passengers/citizens. This is then counteracted with the
comfortable and warm introduction to the small Canadian crew. These
pre-assumptions of what to expect and how their trip will play out any input of
the Cuban people on the plane to give their own opinion. The shot is shown as confident with the camera
eye level and close giving a sense of inclusion which changes greatly when they
get off the plane. On the ground the shots are shown further away or from
behind. For example, when Joey is interviewing school children and giving them
two opinions of Fidel’s rule one, positive and one negative, this is shown
completely from behind. The audience receives
a feeling of being watched and paranoia that he doesn’t step out of line and
insult this small proud island nation. This sense of isolation and exclusion
plays out in other ways. During the interviews, the Canadian crew is rarely in
the same frame as the subject. It is always a back and forth talking head,
rather than the audience perceiving an intimacy and warmth of a two person shot.
Instead, by keeping the interviewer and subject separate- whether it is with a
sailor, mental patient, student, revolutionary – the film illustrates the
tension and misunderstanding of two opposing ideologies in conflict.
In the
editing, the alienation and misunderstanding is shown almost as soon as they
step of the plane. A shot of them talking in the car only seeing Cuba through a
glass window is juxtaposed with a close and warm image of a Cuban man playing
the drums. In the car the shot is
controlled, fluid and unwavering like the Canadian film makers and their
beliefs. In contrast the editing of the Cuban man’s drum playing is sporadic
free and wild; again showing the contrast of life and ideology in different
ways.
In
sound, it is shown in a very simple but effective way. The voiceover by Michael
Ruppo is always put over the image of Cuban’s and their daily life. The voice he uses is summarized in an article
as: “…. A complete lack of insistency about what he says; and that combined
with his use of first person which projects his personal thoughts as to what is
happening on the screen, results in avoidance of an attempt to persuade.” [2] This
projection of personal thought gives the audience an unnatural of displacement.
It plays to the notion that the Cubans are living in a more arduous, complicated
society, but every single shot shows them as carefree and happy. It is again
this classification of the Cuban folks that drives the wedge between them and
the Canadian folks. Rather than letting them narrate their own lives, an
awkward Canadian voice tries to bridge the gap.
When they have the dinner hall scene their own grandiose and boastful
beliefs of what these Cubans believe fall on Anglo Saxon ears and large walls.
The echoing quality gives a sense of emptiness and hollowness, which is also an
accurate assessment of what their words amount too.
The
scene where they visit the Bay of Pigs works effectively on two levels one of
failure and again one of misunderstanding. Geoff, the major voice of capitalism,
drops a throwaway line about visiting Thailand and then immediately shows him
in a Yoga position which actually originates in China. Two elements of an eastern
culture being assimilated by a western man; this reflects the current
historical situation where the Americans were losing the war in Vietnam and
secretly in Laos. Their own struggle to assimilate and change these Asian
nations under a capitalist banner is ironically shown on a beach where a
western man performs Chinese exercises at the same place American backed revolutionaries
failed an invasion to overthrow Fidel. Lastly, this sense of loss by the
Western backed revolutionaries is also foreshadowing the Canadians crew’s own failure
to actually gain an interview with Fidel and the battles that are forthcoming
with themselves.
Finally the dinner hall scenes in the former
house of American textile tycoons seem to be the perfect analogy and
representation of the differences between the Canadians and Cubans. These
dinner scenes, during which they discuss the Cuban problem and how to solve it
without any suggestions or solutions from an actual Cuban, seem- comically
surreal. It is reminiscent of Luis Bunuel movies like “The Exterminating Angel”
or “The Discreet Charm of The Bourgeoisie,” which also deals with the upper
class and absurd dinner scenarios but this proves to be fact. The penultimate
moment of this division is shown when Geoff recants a Western tale in English
to explain the toils of the Cuban citizen while a Cuban butler watches from a
slit in the door and leaves to converse with his comrades in the kitchen. The dinner scenarios do change at the end
where they are broken out of the confines of their large dinner hall to the
outside when they realize Fidel won’t see them.
The
microscopic misunderstanding between the Canadian film crew and the Cuban’s is
a metaphor for the larger misunderstanding and fear that ran through the Cold
War. From: Spies, McCarthyism, a series
of wars and propaganda the film show different sides of the argument without
ever trying to understand it. Also, it
shows a period of Canadian history where unlike the Americans we were heading
down a path of left wing socialism under Trudeau, while meanwhile the U.S was
just getting their first dose of Nixon.
Ultimately this film encapsulates the lull period of this cold war; the
end of the Vietnam War was looming and the Afghanistan war was on the horizon.
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