Malin
is a professor of Russian literature living under the Castro regime, so he
ought to be well prepared to deal with tragedy. However, his specialty was
quite in favor with his dictator (at least until the whole Glasnost business
started), so he enjoyed perks under the corrupt system. Unfortunately, the bill
will come due just before the plug is pulled on Russian aid. Assigned to
translate for young victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster transported to
Cuba, Malin will become overwhelmed by the enormity of their suffering, to the
exclusion of nearly everyone else around him in Rodrigo & Sebastián Barriuso’s
Un Traductor (a Translator), which
screens during the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
Malin
is closely based on the Barriuso Brothers’ father Manuel Barriuso Andino and
his contemporary art gallerist wife Isona is also modeled on their mother,
Magda González-Mora. As the film opens, Malin and Isona do not let trifles like
human rights and free expression trouble them, because they live well. It
therefore comes as a rude shock when the Russian lit department is summarily
closed and the faculty are assigned to serve as translators for the newly arrived
Chernobyl patients. Malin really draws the short straw: night shifts in the
children’s ward. He threatens to quit, but when told to “take it up with Fidel”
he duly straightens up and toes the line.
Soon,
Malin is leading a regular story-time. Not long after that, he starts to get
deeply emotionally involved with the kids and their parents, especially young
Alexi in the isolation ward and his school teacher father Vladimir. Meanwhile,
with the cutting of Soviet aid, Cuban stores are now empty and Malin no longer receives
gasoline vouchers—not that there is any gas left in filling stations anyway.
The poor nutrition starts taking a toll on his son Javi’s health, but Malin
hardly notices. He and the uber-pregnant Isona do not talk anymore, because he
is so physically and emotionally exhausted.
Aside
from Michael Moore, most grown adults now acknowledge the hype surrounding the
Cuban medical system was really just hype. Still, it apparently beat the
facilities available in both the USSR and Putin’s Russia, considering the Cuban
Chernobyl program continued up through 2011. At times, the Barriusos clearly
show a nostalgia for the Cuba Rodrigo never really knew. Yet, it is hard to gin
up nostalgia for any of the circumstances surrounding the Chernobyl disaster.
Indeed,
Un Traductor is not shy when it comes
to playing on our emotions. There are an awful lot of sickly children in this
film. Yet, the clear standout is Genadijs Dolganovs, who brings real dignity to
the proceedings as Vladimir. His big climatic scene with Malin earns the
inevitable lumps in the audience’s throats. Maricel Álvarez is also quite
compelling as Gladys, the treasonous Argentine RN, who first busts Malin’s
chops and then comes to respect his commitment. However, Brazilian
international crossover star Rodrigo Santoro is problematically quite the cold
fish as Malin and Yoandra Suárez’s Isona comes perilously close to a cliched
scold.
In
an enormously telling scene, Malin watches news footage of the fall of the
Berlin Wall, described as a “monument to socialist workers” or some such
nonsense on the Cuban state news report, with conspicuous alarm. The fact that
this was a triumph for human freedom and dignity is completely lost on him, and
most likely the film. The truth is East Germans, Czech, Poles, and Hungarians
do not look back on subsidizing Castro’s police state with much more fondness
than the midnight knocks on the door and the invading tank columns. Frankly,
the degree to which their economy depended on Soviet largess proves how
dysfunctional the Socialist system was and remains. Decidedly mixed, Un Traductor should not be a high
priority during the limited time of the festival, but for those with an abiding
interest in the Chernobyl experience, it screens again tomorrow (1/22) in Provo
and Friday (1/26) and Saturday (1/27) in Park City, as part of this year’s
Sundance.
