When the protagonist (Yasmany Guerrero) of Alberto, of Raúl Prado, asks his brother Tomás (Eduardo Martínez): “Why does one have to live with consequences that do not touch you?”, he discovers himself thinking more about his situation than that of his blood. It is the one who returns and recalls un repaired that, for others, was left in the past as his deceased father.
Alberto, a long time ago victim of a collective act of repudiation, returns to Cuba. He doesn’t want to criticize anyone. He would admit that she has forgiven, that she only wants to see her family, but with her arrival there is a Cinderella atmosphere that does not make it clear if she has been sought to highlight a mood and warn the fate of the protagonist or because when she filmed the director, it was a cloudy day. However, aesthetic purpose or not, accentuates both the existential routine of the country landscape and the alarming arrival of the other subversive, brazen, worm…
Beyond knowing what will happen to the main character, the viewer may soon be interested in looking into what’s behind Alberto’s return. Rest with yours? That the father was in the act of repudiation and that he died before or after all that is told to Alberto affects him? He would have loved to talk to his father again. But why do we feel that all the time he intends to be exempted from his ideology, exile, vocation, personality…? Prado must not, cannot and less achieve, that the discovery of when the revolutionary father died is as much as the short story of the short film can stand. In fact, Thomas blames his brother for leaving. “You were the one who left me alone, in this shitty town.” What did Alberto want to be redeemed by “dirtying” the residence that evicted him, or did he know that his father was repudiating him had changed his decision to leave? What opportunities were offered to the protagonist not to leave? Then Thomas says: “The only way out he found was to shoot himself in the head. You killed him. Yes. You killed him. And you killed him for not trusting him or me.” Seriously? Where was Thomas when the act of repudiation? And how after revealing to him that his father was there he demands trust? Is what they have shown us enough or what one has to assume because it is not (re)presented in this audiovisual? It is very good that some causes and consequences are related, such as that Thomas used to mediate between his father and brother, who was with the latter in the good and the bad. Now, there are plenty of consecutive images that are in the present such as the visit to the tomb, which could be alternated with a sequence not as exclusive as that of mass rejection. Perhaps it is obvious: Alberto did not want to leave, but to reproach in good faith from within. Perhaps it would have agreed to be a critical singer-songwriter, one of those who forbid and then accept because, deep down, they do no harm.
“Proud and extremist the father”? Lol In any case Alberto, because he places a music record in the tomb of that; He gives a guitar to his nephew and, towards the end, we see him sitting with a rope around his neck as if devoting himself from having lived. Repent because he’s dying? That’s one of his worst extremisms. Repentance deceives conscience: it pretends to calm it down. It does not restore the past, does not improve the wound or change the decision. Therefore, it does not save. Save who decides to continue or die with full awareness of the burden carried, of the experience lived. Forget repentance, but not what has been done. That’s the agony and the risk of facing life. What a way to assert it by affirming yourself!
Thomas: Do you have anyone there waiting for you?
Alberto: I’ve had my stuff. But it’s complicated, Thomas. I do not know. Maybe I wasn’t in a place enough for that.
“Why does one have to live with consequences that don’t touch you?” Well, look, yes, they touch Alberto up close. You know he’s back, not exactly to die. Ω
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