1:9:24
I love the final two minutes of Havana (1990)—Redford’s laconic, noir-ish narration, the Key West coastline, the incredible light (the light of the past; the light of celluloid), him standing there alone, like the man in the Tarot's 2 of Wands. The script is so piercing and clear in this last scene, whereas in the rest of the film, it’s cloudy and weak. I often didn’t understand what the characters were really saying or feeling. Redford (or his character Jack) seemed to struggle to get the words out, yet at other times he was so direct with Bobby. So honest and ready, after waiting all his life, he says, to meet her. Jack drives through 4 years—from 1959 to1963. From Havana to Key West. As I write in my book Time Tells, these cinematic time-jumps are always about loss and reunion. The lost years. The loss of a dream love. “It’s not the same.” Love is hurricane country. I think these two minutes are some of Redford’s best moments on screen (“Havana is Redford's Casablanca,” someone wrote online) because in this very flawed, rambling movie he finally plays a Divine Masculine, who honors and nobly serves the power of love, not an avoidant, emotionally withholding man, which is the role Redford always played throughout his career. And of course because Havana is a Sydney Pollack film, the lovers don’t end up together. Apart from The Firm, where the couple was already married, and the possibility of reconciliation at the end of Tootsie, they never do in Pollack’s worlds.
