humbling, sobering flick of bitter truth

Title: LA ULTIMA CENA (The Last Supper)

Director: Tomás Gutiérrez Alea

Country: Cuba

Year: 1976

This brilliantly acted scathing black comedy from Cuban satirist is a dish that’s bitter to taste and hard to stomach. Alea got into the soul, and the ancestral Cuban codes: the religious syncretism, the racism, the superb, the old glories and the absolute lack of respect for the human being.

The movie depicts the tension between the powerful, wishing to reach a narcissistic climax (be like Christ), and the abused wishing to reach freedom. This hugely enjoyable result, evoking both Brecht and Buñuel, is a trenchant and ironic fable of religious hypocrisy.

Christianity was once a great tool of oppression and domination. This film exemplifies what Christian hypocrites did to decimate the African world-view.

The majority of Alea's picture takes place at the dinner table. As such, The Last Supper is predominantly a conversation piece. My favourite scenes involved storytelling, done in the traditional African manner, by different slaves.

That powerful statement pronounced by the leader of the slaves when he masks with a pig head and says, "One day the lie machete the truth while it was sleeping and since then the body of the truth walks around the world with the head of the untrue", still resounds in my mind and spirit.

The Last Supper offers a thought-provoking meditation on master hood and servitude, freedom and bondage.

Go for this unusual and strong film.




P.S. Cuba was able to produce a provocative movie with such fierceness and dark poetry in 1970s, it’s no wonder THE absolute imperial state insisted on imposing sanctions on them.

Chicken or what enche semak? Pok! Pok! Pok! Pok! Pok!