From the e-mail, a reader offers his view of "The Lost City" and differs slightly with my review.
Hi, I'm a fellow Cuban American born in New York of Cuban Exile parents. Like many Cuban Americans, I did not have to be born in Cuba to feel my parents' pain throughout all of these years. I was born in 1963 in New York and raised in Hialeah, Florida, from 1969 to 1989. In 1989 I moved to Southern California where I currently reside for 15 years and call home. Even though I call California home, I still miss the culture I grew up with in Florida and often find myself visiting Florida to get my Cuban fix as my wife calls it.
Like you, I also saw the movie 'The Lost City' in Miami even though I live elsewhere. I disagree with you on a couple of comments you made having to do with Dustin and Bill's parts of the movie. I think Andy placed Bill in the movie to try and make a couple of jokes here and there to kind of take the tension out of the movie a little. It was a real tense movie and you can feel it during the show. About Dustin Hoffman, if I recall he is good friends with Andy and probably offered his services to have a big name in the movie outside of the Cuban Americans throughout the movie.
Anyways, I think the movie will have still had been a success and still would have gotten the message accross without those 2 actors, however I do not think that it hurt the movie at all to have Bill Murray and Dustin Hoffman on the credits. That's my opionion and only that.
My response:
I agree, Murray and Hoffman are not fatal to the movie. Murray had some good lines, and I even think Hoffman's presence and his character helped Garcia tell his overall story, about the neccessity of making choices under even the most difficult of circumstances. And I just love watching him act.
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Have you seen "The Lost City?" Was is it too long or just right? Was Andy Garcia unfair to Ché? What did you think about the music? What memories and feelings did it spark for you? Please leave a comment or two.
Thanks,
MRM.
UPDATED, 2:07 p.m. May 26, 2006
National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez — like me, Maureen Dowd, Ed McMahon, Jon Voight, Susan Sarandon and N.Y. Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman, a graduate of the Catholic University of America (what a homecoming party that would be) — offers her review of "The Lost City."
The money quote:
Garcia’s movie has clearly touched a nerve already: It has been banned in several South American countries. No surprise, given that “Viva Che” is a natural mantra for the likes of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. And we can’t forget, of course, about Fidel Castro, in power since 1959, with doctors threatening he could live to be 140—60 more years.
Garcia has said in response to the controversy about his movie: “Some people think Castro is a savior, that he looks out for kids and the poor. It's a bunch of hogwash. In the 45 years since Castro has been in power, Cuba has been in the top three countries for human rights abuses for 43 of those years. People turn a blind eye to his atrocities.” Not Andy Garcia though.
Unfortunately, here at home, The Lost City is in limited release and not nearly as easy to come upon as Che shirts. But Hollywood is the better for it, even if it saves its embraces for Che whitewashes. It won’t win an Oscar, but it certainly more than earned my ten bucks. Consider the price of your movie ticket or DVD purchase a challenge to the movie industry, a vote of praise for Garcia’s labor of love and heartache, and a friendly wave to people who love what we have — liberty.
Miami radio talk-show host Ninoska Pérez Castellón has also written an excellent review in the form of a thank-you note to Andy Garcia. Read it at El Confeti.
(H/T to Babalú.)
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