The Cuban Undermines Its Heart with Wikipedia-Level Research

Human beings live in multiple timelines simultaneously: That’s the superpower we call “memory.” Everyone makes use of that power every day, whether for reasons mundane or extraordinary. Usually it’s the former: We remember where we left our car keys so we can make the morning commute, or we remember we have to pick up groceries on the way home. Sometimes, though, it’s the latter when we’re able to dig deep into the past to recall defining moments of our lives, from painful reminiscences of last words spoken to grandparents or first loves.

Sergio Navarretta’s new movie, The Cuban, is partly about the way our minds let us time travel on a limited scale, but the first thing most viewers will notice about is that it looks like dishwater: flat and grey-beige, totally drained of vitality as Navarretta’s lens (guided by cinematographer Celiana Cárdenas) tours along the first floor of a long-term care home, where the brightest spot is a resident’s landscape painting. All else is dismal, bereft of color or spirit or a pulse, which is Navarretta’s probable intent. People don’t go to facilities like this to die, per se, and they don’t “go” as much as they’re “taken,” but all the same they end up suffering a low, slow, simmering death where they’re stripped of what dignity they have by nurses and doctors and orderlies with treatment plans that feel tailored toward dehumanization instead of actual care.

The Cuban clearly has strong feelings about that dynamic, carried through both Navarretta’s direction and Alessandra Piccione’s screenplay. They make the point in the movie’s first few minutes and then keep on making it like a carpenter pounding nails entirely through floorboards. Fortunately, they have Ana Golja and Louis Gossett Jr. to give The Cuban some structural integrity. She plays Mina, an Afghani immigrant who works at the nursing home and lives with her aunt, Bano (Shohreh Aghdashloo), in Canada, while he plays Luis Garcia, one of the addled octogenarians living at said home. Mina wants to do right by her patients. Luis is a handful, a shell of a man who doesn’t eat and gets agitated over too much exposure to other people. He’s also an accomplished musician with an abiding love of jazz, shared in common by Mina.

Because Mina’s mind isn’t entirely on her work, and because she has greater aspirations beyond pre-med study, she sets about pulling Luis out of himself and into the land of the cognizant. She plays music for him, noting his fondness for Benny Moré. She learns how to prepare Cuban cuisine and sneaks plates of steaming deliciousness into the home and under the nose of the cook. She pulls her cousin Zahra (Shiva Negar) and her boyfriend Kris (Giacomo Gianniotti) into her schemes, too, bringing Luis to the present by helping him reconnect with his past.