‘Oceans Are the Real Continents’ Review: A Striking Black and White Elegy for the Lives Left Behind in Contemporary Cuba

Film Movement

Many regard Cuba with a sentimental fondness as a Caribbean island suspended in time, complete with vintage cars, colonial architecture, rum and cokes. Beyond this superficial perception of a place still largely cut off from the outside world, few consider the isolation pressed upon the people of Cuba and the factors at play that keep them rooted in a homeland that presents so many constraints, one of the primary contributing factors to the country’s ongoing migration crisis. Oceans Are the Real Continents explores the aftermath of Cuba’s sequestration and the ways it impacts generations of the past, present, and future, operating with an elegantly observational gaze and gorgeous black-and-white cinematography to capture the lonely limitations experienced by its subjects.

Written and directed by Tommaso Santambrogio –– an Italian filmmaker who spent years of his life in Cuba beginning at an early age –– Oceans Are the Real Continents takes place in San Antonio De Los Baños, tracking three separate storylines with a unique cadence. Each narrative focuses on a pair of characters in ways, representing Cubans at distinct yet formative junctures in their lives. Alex and Edith are a twenty-something creative couple, sharing intimate moments in some of their favorite places before Edith obtains a work visa and heads to Europe indefinitely. Youths Frank and Alain are best friends, dreaming of airplane rides and one-day playing baseball for the New York Yankees; little does Alain know that Frank’s family is about to migrate to Miami. Milagros is an elderly widow making a living selling peanuts on the street, passing the hours listening to the radio and reading old letters sent by her husband during his stint as a soldier in the early years of the Angolan Civil War, subsidized for a time by Cuba. Unhurriedly flashing back and forth between these figures, the film lyrically captures their perspectives and links them through their shared experiences of disillusionment and isolation.

Film Movement

Through years of on-the-ground research and exchanges with the locals, Santambrogio captures facets of Cuba’s spirit while never succumbing to overly nostalgic tendencies in Oceans Are the Real Continents. This allows the filmmaker to connect with the complex dichotomy between Cubans and their homeland and harness the degradation of a nation. Through the specific viewpoints of the movie’s central characters, we understand their inner conflict with their country, the attachment and memories entwined with a place that ultimately disenchants because it can only offer fixed possibility. The Cuban trogon –– the island’s national bird –– emerges early in the film as a clear metaphor for its people: away from freedom, trapped in a cage, its only prospect is death.

The film’s construction is bolstered by the intricate and enchanting atmosphere created by the director and his team. Using real shooting locations ranging from romantic grottos to crumbling colonial ruins, Santambrogio often frames his subjects within these archaic spaces with painterly wide shots, accentuating their seclusion in areas largely devoid of other human activity. Boasting a trim screenplay that is more fascinated by sentiment than dialogue, the intradiegetic sounds of rain, wind, and birdsong are a prominent feature in Oceans Are the Real Continents’ sound design, a rich layer of detail that speaks strongly to the movie’s sense of place.

Despite its monochrome palette, the film pays special attention to the searing warmth of the sun and the swirling darkness of storm clouds, further embedding the viewer experience within that of the characters, especially important in a work that so thoroughly aims to capture Cuba’s genuine backdrop. Santambrogio’s decision to shoot in black-and-white with cinematographer Lorenzo Casadio Vannucci works in favor of the film’s overall sense of capturing a nation incapable of evolving, a timelessness that speaks to the push/pull faced by its characters in conflict with the standstill of their lives. In its first moments, the black-and-white images lead us to accept that we are watching a period film, but as the characters are introduced, it becomes compellingly apparent that the narrative is contemporary.

Film Movement

Oceans Are the Real Continents approaches its subjects with an observational process that verges on neorealism or even documentary. Instead of casting his actors with a conventional method, Santambrogio’s process was informed by the spirits of his performers, which he, in turn, incorporated into the DNA of their characters. The director relied on vigorous collaboration with his actors, allowing them to improvise freely during the shooting process. This comes through with a natural potency in the characters’ interactions, their contemplative looks cast over empty landscapes, and their perspectives as wandering figures in a withering country. This more liberal direction of the actors counterbalances the film’s striking visual language, producing a fascinating alchemy throughout its two-hour runtime.

Through deliberate and perhaps unconscious efforts, Oceans Are the Real Continents communicates with several works that spotlight the end of an era, including iconic Cuban films like Memories of Underdevelopment and Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel The Leopard. These nods underscore the film’s portrait of a place in paralysis, with inhabitants unable to bear the suspension any longer. In one scene, the radio playing quietly in the background states that 250,000 Cubans are departing annually for the U.S. alone. Through Santambrogio’s envisionment of Cuba and the narratives he chronicles, Oceans Are the Real Continents significantly invites audiences to have a more human understanding of the nuances that lead individuals to make such difficult decisions to leave it all behind.

4/5

2023 | 120 minutes | Black & White | Spanish wtih English Subtitles

‘Oceans Are the Real Continents’ had its world premiere at the 2023 Venice Film Festival in the Venice Days sidebar. Film Movement will release the movie in the United States beginning on January 10. Click here to find showtimes near you.