Havana Motor Club
Studio: Samuel Goldwyn Films
Directed by Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt
Apr 07, 2016
Web Exclusive
It’s easy to paint Havana as a nostalgic portrait of the past because of its vintage cars and aging architecture. It’s easy to see it through the pages of Hemingway as a bastion of paradise. It’s doubly easy to associate it with Communism and Castro and revolution. That its car culture features underground racing clubs potentially pushes back at the accepted assumption of what makes Cuba what it is to outsiders with pre-conceived notions.
Havana Motor Club will work as a glimpse into the lives of several Cuban car-nuts and their love of racing. Aesthetically, the documentary features these vintage cars – often with parts cannibalized from Chevrolet, Ford, and other makes into a single model – front and center. The racers are the heart, but the cars are the sex appeal. Similarly to how a cooking show amplifies the dishes, director Perlmutt accentuates the beauty of these vehicles.
But, it’s not just surface pleasures. Auto racing has been banned in Cuba since 1962, following the Castro revolution and the tragedy at the 1958 Cuban Grand Prix that left several spectators dead and many more injured when a car veered off the track. Perlmutt uses the cars, frozen in time due to importing laws prohibiting newer makes – though that has loosened – to show the lack of progress and uses the mechanics and cast of racers to show their unquenchable desire. Racing, perceived by the government as frivolous, elitist, unnecessary, and dangerous, is used as a stand-in for basic freedoms. The freedom to race could easily have been the freedom to open businesses or move abroad. In fact, Jose Madera, one of the subjects of the film, sold his car parts to fund his illegal emigration. He tried several times and was always caught, returned to the mainland, and thrown into jail. In the end, he had no working car and he was still in Havana.
The film is too short. There are many interesting threads that disappear in passing. Early on, Rey Garcia’s family garage shows the younger women of the family are more adept and interested in mechanics than many of the young men. Maybe it works as an aside, but their stories are just as intriguing as the men’s. The political bent of the movie isn’t fully developed, and Perlmutt and company somewhat exalt the race’s importance above all else that the parallels between the rights of racing and other basic freedoms are blurred. The film feels on the verge of making a definitive statement, and it has the pieces to do it, teasing it throughout, but then hedges and is mostly just a movie about cars and those who love them.
This is fine, and the difficulties navigating that particular political landscape had to be dodgy. It’s still an interesting film more about the heart of the subjects at the center of it more than it is a historical or political document. The breezy feel and the care for the cars and people within are inviting and Havana Motor Club should be accessible for automobile aficionados and novices alike.
Author rating: 7/10
Average reader rating: 10/10
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