THE SCREEN: Hidden Htstory
Jr, Colin L. Westerbeck
HIDDEN HISTORY Tlllg Sgi glV At least in contour, two Cuban historical epics newly released here, Tomas Alea's The Last Supper and Sergio Girars The Bounty Hunter, are much the same. Each deals...
...The para,llr Alea's title points out between the story he is telling and Christ's makes The Last-Supper heavily allegorical in mood...
...Suddenly, the runaways they are tracking appear above them and try to stone them to death...
...Subsequent impressions coniirm these, too...
...ion, or rather a revelation--a miraculous appearance ,the mere sight of which has the power to convert the wicked...
...hands of t,he very runaways they arc hunting...
...He has been at times a helpless figure, a mock Sambo almost, but it turns out, perhaps, .that he was only playing possum all the v,~hile...
...Similarly, after ,fiis rebellion is put down, he takes xefuge in the house the plantation manager, who then claims not to have seen him when the overseer's men come searching...
...Ever since the bounty hunter took on ,this slave as his guide, both men have met with bad )uck...
...The guide likewise seizes the first opportunity he has to betray the bounty hunter into the...
...In a way the conclusion of his story is even more triumphant than that of the rebel in The Last Supper...
...It may be that the difference bet~veen -them reflects some emerging consensus about the slave history of Cuba--some general fee~ing that what existed as pure legend among slaves in the 18th century became in tbe 19th a more effectively human form of cunning...
...Yet when we look at the historical role that each film assigns to its slave hero, the two Sms cease to be just two of a kind...
...Then he stalks the botmty hunter through ~be bush, machetes him in hand to hand combat, and rides away on his white horse...
...He is chosen by the raneheador, or .bounty hunter, to serve as guide in rounding up the other runaways...
...And in the meantime, his slave becomes an ever more ethereal figure...
...It is that he has become so utterly dependent on his slave-guide---be ~has gone so deep into the hills and gambled so muoh on this moan's turning up the other runa~vays--that the balance of power between them has shifted...
...Both films abound in severed heads on stakes, severed ears (the customary punishment for runaways), garrotings and other shock images...
...In each film it is even possible to see the slave-owners themselves as .the ones responsible for their troubles...
...When the guide seizes the opportunity of another ambush to turn the tables on the bounty hunter, and hunt him, we xealize fully the possibility ~bat he has been luring this white man into this trap all along...
...Although the guide has to run for his life .too, ,there hovers over the episode a question whether tl~e slave didn't lead the bounty ~mnter into this ambush on purpose...
...At one point, for instance, the slave leads the bounty hunter up a gully that turns~out to be a cul de sac...
...In the last frames of the film, for instance, we see the slave hero running up into the h'flls...
...He puts on an armband that was l"ipped off upon his recapture at the film's beginning...
...At his master's banquet he gobbles food like a beast and spits in '.his master's face...
...Unlike the ending of The Last Supper, however, this bravado is somewhat unexpected and only deepens uncertainties we 'have had about everything that precedes it...
...The guest of honor at the banquet leads the next day an .uprising so desperate that he is its only .survivor...
...This sense we have of him as a purely physical being is increased by a hideous wound to his eye and his newly severed ear...
...Whatever these two films together may tell us about either Cuba's past or 'her present, though, they don't need such thistorical connections to be of interest...
...Though we may not think of the characters as their biblical counterparts at each moment, they do always seem to ropreser~t moral states that are larger than life...
...Each is perfectly capable of standing on its own...
...This two-sidedness is also what makes The Bounty Hunter seem so human a drama where ~ The Last Supper, with its hero who is spiritualized in the end, seems a more scriptural tale, one larger than life...
...When we meet ~im upon his recapture at :the beginning of the film, we are struck by his ugliness, which makes him seem more an animal than a man...
...But as the film progresses, the master turns out to be the ~bestial one--a man who goes from piety and shows of Christian charity to a drunken stupor at his own "last Supper, '' and then (o a frenzy of killing at the end...
...Such ambiguSty makes the slave's drama a su~assingly human one in the end...
...It becomes an i~nic commentary on Christian virtue in which Christ betrays his disciples...
...The slave in effect vaporizes himself in order to escape his bondage...
...Running up a hill with the sun behind him in the film's last shot, he ascends like Christ into the heavens...
...Here is yet another moment where tbe ~slave, far from being a .fool himself, appears to be making a fool of the bounty hunter...
...Just before the scene where he turns on the bounty hunter, there is a scene where the bounty hunter defends his guide during a mutiny by his men...
...When his owner passes out at their last supper, the slave .blows a cloud of magic dust into his face to hex him...
...21 July 1978:470 By contrast, the slave hero of The Bounty Hunter is an extremely ambiguous figure...
...For before he makes for the hiss, ,he kills the bounty hunter himself...
...They become distinctly individual interpretations of history...
...At a banquet which his owner holds for twelve slaves during Easter week, as an act of Christian charity, this leader among runaways is given the place on the right hand of his host...
...Indeed, when the manager looks again for the slave two minutes later, he is gone...
...It is as if he were an apparit...
...The camera is below him as he makes his way along a ridge, and his back-tit figure is an undeniably Romantic one...
...In The Last Supper this miscreant is, precisely because of his rebelliousness, accorded a special honor...
...This is an understandable assumption for two Marxist films r share, since history is for Marxism a consequence of the [.allure of old orders as much as the self-assertion of new ones...
...Over the course of the film he has become, like Zapata's horse, a spiritual presence, an incarnatiou of the will ,to be free...
...But in each case the white master gets for thanks just what he deserves from his l~lack slave: further rebell.ion...
...In the end .the slave heroes of both films light out for the bills, free at last...
...Since these two films are based on historical fa~--The Last Supper on an 18th-century incident well known in Cuban history, The Bounty Hunter on a 19th-century journal kept by the .title character--it isn't surprising that they shotrld also share a good deal of iconography...
...COLIN L. WESTERBECK, JR...
...Freedom doesn't seem so much a spirit .in ,him as a dumb instinct...
...The extraordinary implication of this gesture is not that the ,bounty ,hunter is, 14ke the plantation owner in The Last Supper, brimming over with Christian charity...
...Each deals with a runaway slave who is recaptured and then escapes again...
...In The Bounty Hunter a somewhat different honor befalls the runaway singled out as leader...
...l'h/s is characteristic of the action in The Bounty Hunter: while any single event may seem to move in one d~rection on the surface, underneath the whole flow of events is actually going the opposite way...
Vol. 105 • July 1978 • No. 14
