“An intimate and immersive look at an invisible territory at the margins of society.”

David Beltrán i Marí’s Al Oeste, en Zapata (To the West, in Zapata) opens with a long take set in the swamps of Zapata, Cuba. It shows Landi, a man forced to hunt crocodiles in a biosphere reserve far from home, in constant isolation, away from his wife Mercedes and their disabled child for weeks. As Landi walks through the swamp, carrying a crocodile on his back, his solitude and dire circumstances illustrate how Al Oeste is not just a story about this particular family and their tribulations. Instead, the film uses them to explore broader dualities that structure all of our lives: the division between the private and the public, the collective and the individual, the political forces and the bodies upon which those political forces act. It is an intimate and immersive look at an invisible territory at the margins of society, and an effort that echoes Roberto Minervini’s dive into the abyss of today’s America in his documentary The Other Side.

One of the film’s most striking moments makes this point clear. Landi tries to catch a crocodile but fails. In the moment of failure, he awkwardly stares at the camera. When he finally captures the animal, he skins it and prepares the meat. His only companion for weeks, a radio, provides him with a connection to the outside world. It broadcasts news of the COVID-19 outbreak and its spread throughout the Caribbean, as well as the Cuban Communist Party’s actions in response to the virus. Reports consistently followed by political propaganda about keeping one’s revolutionary spirit alive.

The significance here is that whether Landi is hunting crocodiles in the swamps or living far from any major Cuban city with his family in a rural area, he dwells both inside and outside the historical processes that directly affect his existence. However, the most important aspect is how his inclusion is always mediated through the radio and, in a meta sense, by cinema itself, through the making of this documentary and its eventual reception.

Thus, Beltrán i Marí seems more interested in the idea of an individual whose experience of the world is mediated through narrativity – through the act of continually telling a story in order to keep its memory alive. For Landi, this appears as the constant reminder of his people’s revolutionary history via the old radio, his only companion through days without end. For his wife and son, although not in the swamp, we see that they are just as isolated from the outside world as he is. This becomes clear every time he returns home, and husband and wife update each other about their separate lives. Last but not least, for Beltrán i Marí’s audience this is conveyed through the experience of isolation in Cuba’s rural areas via his film.

This brings us to a key aspect of political filmmaking: how time in these images is always the present – the kiss, the killing, the destruction, the separation, or the reunion, all happening at the moment each image is seen. Yet, each time these images are seen, they are reinvented by the person who interacts with them within a specific political, economic, and sociological context. With every governmental broadcast, the revolution is brought to the present and keeps happening again and again. Something that Beltrán i Marí doubles down on by placing it within the intimate context of Landi, Mercedes, and their child’s lives. A personal history that will be interpreted and reinvented every time it is revisited by someone watching this documentary.

As a result, Al Oeste, en Zapata contextualizes Landi’s personal story within not just the history of Cuba, but within the larger context of world history, particularly as the pandemic forced isolation on people everywhere. The resulting isolation, in turn, became fertile ground for the spread of violent and fascist ideologies globally. That is, society moves toward erasing its communal aspects, making the once-vague threat of Margaret Thatcher’s claim that “there is no such thing as society, only individuals and their families” a tangible and pressing reality.

On this matter, it is worth noticing how while Landi hears about COVID-19 on his radio, we catch a fleeting glimpse of his wife, briefly appearing with a mask during the second half of the film – an understated visual reminder of the world beyond their isolation that left me wondering how cinema, literature, and art as a whole will absorb and reflect this global experience and how we will negotiate with its memory.

However, this focus also reveals a significant issue with the film – one that prevents it from reaching its full potential. There is a frustrating imbalance between the macro and micro aspects of Landi’s story, particularly when it comes to juxtaposing his personal life with Cuba’s history, as seen in the decision to keep him silent for much of the film’s first half. During this time, the only voice we hear is that of the radio, constantly speaking of a glorious past revolution or the biggest sanitary crisis of the century so far. This imbalance is also clear in the film’s second half, a segment that is more tender and ultimately full of compassion and love for its subjects – Landi’s wife and their son who await his return together.

Here, there is no radio, no propaganda; and although Mercedes is as isolated inside the house as Landi is in the swamps, she is not merely hearing about COVID on the radio – she is seen wearing a mask. She is not listening to reports about a past revolution; she is dealing with her son’s condition and thinking about his future, not the country’s. At this point, the film struggles to clearly define the relationship between the private and the public, the collective and the individual, especially in their interactions. In many ways, this is the most significant duality portrayed by Beltrán i Marí, the one between Landi and Mercedes.

In the end, while Landi’s life may be seen as a small footnote in his country’s history – much like all of ours in relation to our own countries – Mercedes’ role in this story can be viewed as a supporting one, rather than one that, like her husband’s, stands on its own. This is a shame because Al Oeste is closer to greatness whenever we see Mercedes taking care of her son on the screen.