The Buena Vista Social Club, in its heyday, was a haven for the best musicians and dancers in Havana, a place to get together and play for themselves. It is long since gone, turned into a residence since the revolution. Wim Wenders' latest film begins in the Havana streets, with Ry Cooder, the film's producer, and once famous Cuban bandleader, Compay Segundo, searching the neighborhoods for the spot where the most famous Latin stars performed for American tourists.

The film goes beyond the documentary of a history of Cuban music and Cuban musicians. We relive a special time in the stories of the players who lived it. The tropically wicked rhythms and mysterious melodies seduce us with the passion of the island. These musicians lived and played with a passion until their world came to an abrupt halt after the Cuban Revolution on New Year's eve, 1959. A year later the first Communist country in the Western Hemisphere was declared off limits to all U.S. trade and travel. The embargo continues to this day and is a hot political topic in the media again. But the glory days of the Buena Vista Social Club, like all the grand hotels and casinos, were over.

The story follows American musician and guitar icon, Ry Cooder, who went to Havana to learn some of the old songs and record the local rhythms. On a search to secure the rights to record the songs, Cooder found that many of the famous stars of that time were still alive, living obscurely behind their memories. Together with current recording artists and engineers, they sought out some of the greatest legends of Cuba's music history, most of whom had drifted into anonimity since the revolution.

Wenders' camera captures Havana in its most colorful street scenes, moving with the tempo of the avenidas and the rhythm of the music, capturing images of a city that seems not to have changed since 1959, a snapshot of that moment in time. Her streets are clogged with fifty year-old American automobiles, many of which have, no doubt, been rebuilt numbers of times. Even the texture of Wenders' camera is rich with the color of the city as it appeared in the fifties. But the stars of this film are the musicians themselves and the music they play, still rapt with sexuality and life. Ninety year-old Compay Segundo playfully reminds us that he has five children and is working on his sixth and the laughter and joy on his face admits of the carefree feeling that emanates throughout this movie.

We follow along the process with the band, through practices and recording sessions and brief bios of each of the principal characters and their music in Havana. Of course, there are the omnipresent cigars of all shapes and sizes, hand-rolled staples in their lives. Some of the performers are rusty and they must work hard to put together a final record together, playing the songs they knew so well. Still, love's labors flow like a river of emotion, like the tears of joy when they look at one another as they get the timing and feel of the songs just right, like the days when their music breathed fire in the streets.

The film follows through the processes, and when the players begin to realize it will soon come to an end, there is a sad soulfulness in their music. Like the musicians, you don't want it to end either. So it is fitting that these poor musicians, who have lived isolated from any American influence for close to forty years, would finally see America, and they fly into New York for a one night stand in Carnegie Hall, in what would be their last gig. It is with this sadness and joy to see these talented people rejoice in the goal that they had once felt was unattainable, to travel to New York and play their music.

We smile as Ruben Gonzales, the eighty year-old piano player, gazes like a wide-eyed child out at the Statue of Liberty, waaay down below his perch atop the Empire State Building. When he can finally make it out, he says he thought it would be larger.

But it is the words of Ibrahim Ferrer, the singer once billed as the Cuban Nat King Cole, that fill the scene with a journey he's wanted to make all this time. Earlier in the film he says that the Cuban people must still be grateful for the revolution, a people who are not caught up in their material possessions. Having all those luxuries and posessions would be their end, he says. They live their humble life happily, singing and playing and enjoying the companionship of their music. You know that, for them, Carnegie Hall may have been a goal of a lifetime come true, but they were all glad to go home.

This is an excellent movie to let your inhibitions down and enjoy a wonderful story of some very happy people, coming alive for a swan song before the millennium. All the local dialogue is in Spanish with subtitles but the music is the universal message that transcends all the language barriers. Check it out.