La muerte de un burócrata - The death of a bureaucrat Director: Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
La muerte de un burócrata - The death of a bureaucrat
Director: Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
Cast: Salvador Wood, Silvia Planas, Manuel Estanillo, Omar Alfonso
Origin: Cuba
Year: 1966
Author of review: Roberto Matteucci
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"The Michelangelo of the poor."
The etymology of the word bureaucracy is the union of Bureau – office from French language - and Kratos – power in the Greek language. (1)
So, bureaucracy is the power of the office. It has characteristic and distinct clandestine domination. Government, parliament, dictator, king, president are unanimously considered normal sovereignties. But they are also submissive. Bureaucracy has its own life with separate and cruel rules. It is led by inhuman executors, armed with deadly modules.
Bureaucracy survives the government. Revolutions annihilate ministers and deputies but bureaucracy is always safe. It has the merit of adapting quickly; if there is a transformation, it amends small particular, like forms or details and it is again ready to oppress. Bureaucracy adapts to each configuration of power, both democratic and totalitarian.
It has a thousand-year history:
“… Bureaucracy and bureaucratic methods are very old and that they must be present in the administrative offices of every government whose sovereignty extends over a large area. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt or the emperors of China created an imposing bureaucratic machine ... " (2)
It starts from the Egyptians, from the Chinese and reaches our days. Bureaucracy persists in every era, apparently obsequious with any authority. However, it conceals itself, it is an extraneous virus, a parasite.
The army of the public administration is made up of relentless officials; useless but ruthless soldiers. They combat war like robots. Weapons are incomprehensible rules, recited completely in all circumstances and places. Regulations are written in an esoteric language, with illogical applications to be completed slavishly; any mistake is punished with civil condemnation.
Bureaucracy has no territorial and temporary limits, it gets on well with all governments. Honestly, there are fearless, brave rebels. Unaware, they fight it, but battle is lost, it would be better to surrender immediately and appeal for clemency.
Juanchin is a young Cuban, bold he tries to defeat it. We are in 1966, in La Habana. The story of the martyr Juanchin is narrated by the unforgettable Cuban director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea in the film La muerte de un burócrata - Death of a Bureaucrat presented restored at the Venice Classics of the Venice Film Festival of 2019.
Uncle Paco is a workaholic, praised for his attachment to work. His factory produces busts of José Martí. To increase production, he invented the machine capable of industrially making hundreds of busts. Unfortunately, an accident during the use of his creation will be the reason for his passing away. To celebrate his devotion, family and friends decide to bury him with the work card. This rhetorical gesture will be the cause of an unpredictable tragedy.
The nephew Juanchin accompanies the widow to get the pension. Everything is in order, it can be paid right away, just needs she delivers the husband's work card. The card is inside the coffin. The great duel between Juanchin and the merciless Cuban administration begins.
Juanchin asks to exhume the cadaver, the answer is negative. Rule is inflexible: the coffin can be exhumed just after two years from the burial. He does not give up, he challenges them openly, infiltrating the cemetery at night to steal it. Recovered the work card, he must return the body. A problematic issue, for the bureaucracy, the exhumation never happened. The corpse cannot be outside the cemetery even if the reality is contrary.
The clash becomes global at her entrance.
The author's topics are traditional but sublimely narrated.
There is an impossible and difficult funeral to conclude. In 1995, the director describes the identical subject in Guantanamera directed with Juan Carlos Taibo.
In both, the funeral is an allegory, it is a description of the situation on the Caribbean island.
La muerte de un burócrata - Death of a Bureaucrat is pure social satire. Cuban society is re-enacted with intelligent sarcasm. The film depicts the contradiction between good and bad effects of the revolution. The same theme of the delicious Fresa y chocolate - Strawberry and Chocolate directed in 1993 always by the Guantanamera couple. In Strawberry and Chocolate, the dichotomy is between love for Cuba. The first aspect is the positive social justice of the long revolt. The second one is the painful economic consequences.
The derision is not just for Cuba, it is a worldwide problem.
Bureaucracy does not happen only in Cuba but has contaminated the whole world. Bureaucrats are caricatures of evil everywhere. They are like repetitive stupid mechanical devices in their denials.
Juanchin confronts the satanic army.
He is a shy, clumsy, polite, weak person, but he has some pride moments, these qualities push him to fight memorable battles.
It is surrounded by heartless robots. Bureaucrats are not proud, they do not despise the job. They are automata, replicants, androids, without feeling.
The movie has a chapter structure. Each one has a linguistic emphasis, starting from the funeral scene, with sculptures and ironic photos.
Analysis of two examples. The first one.
Juanchin and his aunt do not persuade the employee to give her a pension without a work card. So together they go to talk with the manager.
Medium-shot, the boss wipes his glasses with condescension. Mise-en-scene: an office with a statue, books and a large window, through it can peek inside the departments. The desk is big and tidy, with many stationery items and an ornament cannon directs towards the camera. The manager catechizes with prolix phrases, full of rhetoric, it is a meaningless and practicality philippic.
Cut. Medium-shot, the nephew is sitting shyly in front, the camera shoots him shoulders-level-shot.
Cut. Shot to the employee guilty of denying pension. It is a close-up, the eyes look downwards, in the direction of Juanchin, crushed among all. Slowly he turns his head to wink at the colleague.
Cut. The friend smiles back, then acquiesce the boss's words.
Cut. The manager has the previous position, plays with glasses and continues the sermon. He gets up, the camera moves laterally, and then trolleys back to film the total long-shot scene. Everyone is from behind.
Cut. The nephew is disoriented and threatened. He observes with amazement the hostile cannon ornament directed at him, therefore hiding, he swifts it.
Cut. Middle-shot. The manager is standing, he is looking out through the window, putting on his glasses on to see better.
Cut. He looks at a woman from another office while adjusting her stockings. Voice-over, he cleans his voice, the position of the female distracts him.
Cut. Continues the boring speech.
Cut. Juanchin interrupts him by confirming that the uncle was an exemplary worker.
Cut. The manager ratifies and walks around the room. The camera follows him. He talks about Egyptians, he sits down. In the middle-shot, he performs an allegorical act, he finds the solution and at the same time moves the cannon against the nephew. However, he is not concentrated, his gaze points out outside.
Cut. His attention is on the colleague, with a tight dress she is pick up something from the floor.
Cut. The boss stands up, and pronounces the sentence, they must resurrect the corpse. There is no alternative. Lots of evanescent chatter.
This is bureaucracy. Endless chatter, with no concreteness to solve problems. The ornament cannon remains pointed at Juanchin.
Similar is the scenery of the funeral intending to carry back the stolen body.
Mise-en-scene: cemetery office. Medium-shot of the official while arguing with the chauffeur. The employee scrutinizes him, grumbles, closes a big book. He is going to the manager sitting on an enormous chair at the end of a long hall. He looks like a king receiving subjects. The camera is on them. Close-up of the willpower driver, busy dusting the livery. He is indifferent to the discussions of the two bureaucrats. They are reading a paper. Zoom, the two cemetery employees are reaching the driver and ordering him not to enter with the coffin.
At the same time, an another funeral arrives.
The boss: "this gentleman was buried three days ago" so he is already indoors the cemetery. The wise driver, with challenge behaviour, indicates with his finger the cadaver in the car, continuing to scrutinize the two "but if he is there". The manager looks out. The diatribe persists. Bureaucrats deny the truth. For the big book, the Bible for arrogant employees, he is already buried. The dead body on the street does not exist despite the evidence.
Nevertheless, the driver is an obstinate and tenacious man: "I have twenty years of experience, I have buried ministers, senators, bishops, generals and doctors, so you can not to teach me anything" and a brawl breaks out, mockingly violent, above all amusing and absurd. A real farce, with strong fist-punch, with cake thrown in the face. Nobody is excluded, even the policeman and the priest are victims.
Bureaucracy has become a religion, their mega register is like the Bible, the insurrectionaries are exterminated.
The narration has social, political, with human elements.
The parody takes on Kafkaesque dimensions because Juanchin is shattered in the gears of formalism, of lengthiness, of stiffness.
The film has the timing and the rhythm of the comic, with a fast pace in the pleasant punch-up outside the cemetery.
Bureaucrats are filmed in their superfluous gestures, ironic but quick in their uselessness.
Attention, bureaucrats are hard workers, but they exclusively produce papers.
Long-shot, reasoned focus, voice-over, classical camera location, graphic montage.
Fidel Castro and Che Guevara fought the wrong revolution, their slogan should have been: "Muerte a la burocracia."
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