Talking of Cubans and zombies…
By José Ernesto González Mosquera and Randy García Hernández
From the Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano
HAVANA – Judging from the interminable lines outside the Payret and Chaplin cinemas, there is unusual interest in Juan de los Muertos, a fiction feature film entered by young filmmaker Alejandro Brugués (Personal Belongings) in the 33rd International Festival of the New Latin American Cinema. The festival brought to the island the topic of fantastic cinema to which the Hollywood industry has long accustomed us.
Thousands of beings without any conscience run amok through Havana’s Malecón. Overturned cars, destroyed streets and fallen buildings picture a large city in chaos. Havana now belongs to the zombies. In the whole city, there is only one man capable of stopping the imminent collapse: Juan de los Muertos.
For the first time, the Malecón, the Rampa and the Capitol esplanade were filled with the living dead, who left a trail of destruction and death unprecedented in the Cuban capital. Of course, all this was invented by Brugués creative vision.
Roughly speaking, the movie deals with a time when Havana, without any explanation, begins to be infected by a huge number of zombies who are appearing everywhere else in the world, while the official channels blame the dissidents and the United States.
Faced with this catastrophe, Juan decides to take advantage of the situation and make a living “killing the already dead.” He then begins a “cleanup” that hinges on how much money a client can pay. His team is composed of his friend Lázaro (Jorge Molina), El Vladi California (Andros Perrugorria), a tourist guide and the pride of his father, Lázaro; “La China” (Jazz Vila), a transvestite and deadly slingshooter, “Cousin” (Eliecer Ramírez), a man who can scare Death herself but who shuns the sight of blood, because he faints, and Camila, Juan’s daughter (played by Spanish actress Andrea Duro, who played Yoli in the series Physics or Chemistry.)
First expectantly waiting for the premier and now pleased by the viewers’ response, Brugués comments about his second film, which has caused such a stir.
How did the idea of the movie come about?
It came to me five years ago while I was walking on the street and saw an odd-looking man. Immediately, I turned to my producer, Inti Herrera, who was beside me and said that, using actors who looked like that, we could make a movie about zombies without the need for makeup. I stared at him and said: “That’s going to be my next creation.”
Why a comedy about zombies?
I love horror, science fiction and adventure movies in general, but I’m attracted more to this subgender of zombies with a comedy twist (zomedy). The genre of zombies was born as social criticism. When George Romero made The Night of the Living Dead in 1968, he was trying to criticize the War in Vietnam and racism. In the best zombie movies, there is always a subtext of social criticism. All I did was to appropriate that basic element and adapt it to our reality.
In a way, then, the film reflects ordinary Cubans at the same time that it vents a social criticism.
We and the zombies have a lot of things in common. It’s enough to look at each other and analyze one another. Without the element of social criticism that would not be funny. It would probably be just another zomedy and we already have enough of those. I think that it is precisely the subtext that elevates this movie over the others of its kind and makes it accessible to audiences that, by and large, would not watch a movie of this type.
The film transforms emblematic places in Havana. Aren’t you worried by the public’s reaction?
It was always my purpose to somehow display iconic places in the city. I wanted to show empty streets in the heart of the city and destroy buildings that we’re used to seeing. I believe it is a way to reach the people better, to identify them with the places they see.
And the FOCSA came down…
The script said a building had to be brought down. Well, I live right in front of the FOCSA [skyscraper] and I hate it! It doesn’t allow light to enter my home. That’s how I decided, on my own, that the FOCSA had to go. It was fun.
A feature film of that size implies a challenge in terms of production…
As we conceived it here in Cuba, the movie needed the support of many institutions, a little from everybody. Basically, it’s a Cuban-Spanish coproduction – La Zanfoña Films from Spain and Fifth Avenue Films from Cuba. The movie has values that go beyond the budget we established and that’s quite noticeable on the screen. The cost was always much greater than what we expected and a lot less than what we needed. In all, it cost about 2.3 million euros.
The filming took about two months and was done in Havana. Post-production took six months in Spain, quite fast for that type of movie. Special effects and animations were done at that time. All in all, we used 250 plans.
How did the actors adapt to the new techniques?
They trained for the choreographed fights. They learned wrestling to learn how to move in action scenes. To get them used to the stunts with harnesses and other mechanisms, our experts took them to the Morro, so they could learn climbing and not be afraid of the heights and move well while hanging. They worked very hard in that sense.
Was the movie hard to direct?
During the filming, I directed 150 persons. It was exhausting. The type of cinema, the show represented by Juan de los Muertos is very hard and requires rigorous planning and a tremendous mental strain, because it is completely abstract. You’re filming a scene and you don’t know what it’s going to look like until all the special effects have been added, months later. It was like learning again to make movies.
Do you think the movie will change the way filmmaking is done in Cuba?
It’s true that the only precedent for Juan, in tone, was Vampires in Havana. Maybe that will give it a special impact but I don’t think it’s going to change anything. I would like the movie to open up people’s minds to developing more ambitious projects. We should not be limited by the budgets and should make big films of this type, with more resources and new techniques and enrich the audiovisual product and makes it more interesting from the point of view of esthetics and emotion. It would help to achieve a cinema of greater prestige; closer to modern society. I sincerely wish I could see more films on this scale in Latin America.
