The Buena Vista Social Club

WIM WENDERS’ soundtracks to date have offered irrefutable proof of his seemingly flawless taste in music, but until Buena Vista Social Club, he had yet to make a music film.

It had to be done eventually, and the result is now with us – a documentary on the exploits of the Grammy-winning Cuban OAP jazz band of the same name. If it sounds like a project so esoteric it borders on perversity, rest assured – anyone who walks out of Buena Vista Social Club without a smile on their face is either dead or well on the way.

While impossible to compare with Wenders’ feature films, this joyously infectious little gem offers a supremely uplifting affirmation of the power of music. Although Latin jazz never really rang this listener’s bell, it is played here with such glorious enthusiasm and dexterity (by a bunch of near 90-year-olds) that your very skeleton will start foot-tapping and bone-rattling.

The clincher is the way Wenders intersperses live and studio footage with the first-hand life-story narrations of the various band members: the feeling that comes with watching a gang of musicians sixty years one’s senior reducing New York’s Carnegie Hall to ecstatic applause is one that defies description.

Wenders obviously will have more substantial goodies to offer us in the New Year and beyond, but even his side-projects have a knack of sticking that warm, glowing sensation in one’s soul. Watch this and see how long your smile takes to subside.