The film has become very popular, and will be the longest sustained look that many people take at Cuba. It is therefore worth taking a serious look at it and its messages.
The film begins with the Cuban photographer Korda showing some of his pictures of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. (Korda was responsible for the famous Che image - taken at the funeral for the victims of an early act of sabotage when a cargo ship was blown up in Havana harbour.) Why is this footage presented at the beginning of the film? No return is made to it, and it has apparently no connection with the story of these elderly musicians.
Much of the film simply shows the musicians going about their work, and talking about their lives. They are an engaging group, and one wonders what Wenders has contributed to capturing this. The music is also wonderful - if you like son and the related Cuban musical forms that are the basis for salsa. There is a wonderful moment where Rubén González, the pianist, is playing. His contributions have the quality of the greatest jazz pianists. He looks up incredulously as Cooder contributes a more than usually irritating glissando on his slide guitar (look I'm here too!).
Cooder, of course is the other big subject of the film. The brave North American goes into 'communist' Cuba, rescues these oppressed, neglected pensioners, and brings them to the attention of the world. (The story that the revolution sidelined these musicians just won't stand up to scrutiny, by the way.) We see Cooder driving an old motorbike through Havana, we see him listening to the tapes from the recording sessions. We see him trying to track down a song writer.
In between the footage of the musicians there are some voyeuristic shots of Cuban people going about their business. Some of these shots are close enough to be classed as portraiture - no doubt Cooder and Wenders will go back to distribute these people's share of the royalties.
The edited narrative from the musicians will of course be selective. An earlier British film (screened in 1998) about the same musicians focussed on Juan de Marcos and his interest in the bands of the 50s. At one point Rubén González and others wonder why the USA is so hostile to Cuba. In the sleeve notes to his solo CD R. González also talks about the difference the revolution made for black Cubans.
There is a particular silence in Buena Vista Social Club. For 40 years the USA has blockaded the island. It has attempted to strangle the economy, and hence the Cuban people's struggle for independence from the northern power. Yet the results of that blockade are there to see in almost every frame: the old vehicles, the run down buildings, the basic furnishings in people's houses.
It is the last minutes of the film that are most sickening (and here the point of the sequence with Korda becomes apparent - is it to remind the viewer that Cuba is a 'communist' country?). After their Carnegie Hall concert the Cubans explore New York city. Of course they are impressed with the material richness of the buildings, the shops, the cars. Cut to Havana, find the most marginal looking people and the most run down looking buildings you can (I don't remember seeing a shot of homeless New Yorkers, or poor people's housing). Perhaps here is the explanation for the Korda sequence - to remind the viewer that Cuaba is 'communist', and to set up the link between a run down, economy and the revolution. Anyway, there the film ends with the not so hidden message: aren't the Yankees wonderful, saving these old folk from neglect and poverty in the ramshackle Cuban state (the same state that has better infant mortality figures than a certain powerful american country where 35% of the population have no health insurance, and where children take guns to school).
For another review of both this film and Lagrimas Negras (about that other grupo de bisabuelos: Vieja Trova Santieguera) - see New Left Review: No 238 Nov/Dec 1999. In the magazine of the liberal Spanish paper, El País, earlier this year that group's, 75 year old Reinaldo Hierrezuelo remembered having to beg a landlord for a hollow to live in, after being evicted with his family because they couldn't pay the rent. 'I haven't forgotten. I've read and lived this history. In Cuba we have problems, but it is shameful to see what is happening in other latin american countries.'