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| I am Cuba |
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  (9/10)
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Runtime: 141 |
| Public Rating: 8.12 (52 votes) |
Director: Mikheil Kalatozishvili |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Drama |
Year: 1964 |
| Writer(s): Enrique Pineda Barnet & Yevgeni Yevtushenka (Cuban Version) |
| Distributor: Mosfilm/ICAIC |
| Reviewed by: Julian Boyance |
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Starring: Sergio Corrieri, Salvador Wood, Jose Gallardo, Luz Maria Collazo, Raul Garcia
Finally, I was able to witness with my own eyes I am Cuba, a film continually mentioned by both filmmakers and cinematographers as an astounding film. With some of the most uniquely orchestrated imagery this side of the Western Hemisphere, I am Cuba stands atop the mountain of cinematic virtuosity.
With reckless abandon, the film subjectively throws you into its world, catching you up within its events. Despite such visual morsels, imperfections do sap energy from the film’s totality. At times tedious (the extreme wide/fish-eye lens wears on you), other times undeniably riveting, the film’s paradoxical aspects are part of its challenging charm.
Wearing the propaganda label proudly, I am Cuba hurls a Molotov cocktail toward imperialist bourgeoisie cinema by using didactic and dogmatic tactics, and depending on your political bent, this could be a deterrent or an enticement.
Triumph of the Will (a cinematic/documentary marvel in my opinion) like various other films, continues to have a problematic history, understandably. Various critics may condemn the propagandist nature of that film, but contrary to Triumph, calling I am Cuba propaganda only belabors a perceived negative and asserts the film’s positive.
If only the story’s characters reached the emotional resonance of its visuals. It would be an irrefutable masterpiece if not for the characters’ lack of audience identification keeping the film from reaching quiet perfection. We simply do not connect with the characters like in the superior films: Battle of Algiers,Lucia I,II,III, and Memories of Underdevelopment.
The film is a cinematic portrait of a volatile island with heroes named Marti and Castro told with a socialist bent, ICAIC, Russian financiers, and a creative team of Russian filmmakers.
Like Lucia I,II,III, the vignette structured stories unsettlingly immerses us in its sense of time and place, lets the moment fade, permeating our mind, then leaves us to contemplate. The film reaches beyond rhetoric or economic ideology through touchingly pained lives of the people we witness: injustice, depravity, destruction by imperialism’s sledgehammer hand.
The wrenching evils experienced in Lucia and Battle of Algiers are darker, but no less important than I am Cuba‘s gentler, yet just as gritty and devastating approach.
…"You are not shooting to kill. You are firing at your past. You are firing to protect your future. Do not fear death. To die for the Motherland is to live."…
The omnipotent voice informing the people/viewer, creating a complex perspective duality.
Through several characters, the fabric is sewn together to make a patchwork quilt of intertwined lives. The awakening of a people’s civil disobedience, an event always relevant, is excitingly portrayed. The film strains your patriotic nerves, as you witness a people’s struggle and the remarkable strength necessary to break the chains of oppression. And if you have any type of conscience, the United States’ own culpability weighs heavy on the mind. Not exactly topical subject matter in today’s wartime climate.
People not only being re-taught the importance of past heroes, cultural importance, and the right to control their own destiny, but also being shown the optimistic future by way of strong willed young people leading the path to a new awakening.
The film is definitely high political drama in the grand tradition of Eisenstein.
Although the film lacks Eisenstein’s specifically structured montage editing, Eisenstein’s spirit is felt in the way the mise-en-scene is so expertly orchestrated - seemingly controlled yet freewheeling. The film’s political aims definitely compare favorably to Eisenstein’s politically oriented masterpieces. Mind you, Eisenstein was given, given total control of cities and its people by the government to provide the maestro a world to create and shape such influential films as, Strike and Battleship Potemkin.
I am Cuba almost sneakily captures this new Cuba taking shape.
This ability to balance the controlled orchestration with real time immediacy is quite an accomplishment. Something most filmmakers strive a lifetime to capture. It’s a gem that benefits from a fascinating, emotional roller coaster ride, and dynamic compositional value wrapped in a crisp, monochromatic palette. As we look back some forty years later, it’s difficult to image this film in color, something which would destroy the perfect aesthetics of the black and white film stock (infrared to be exact).
I would succinctly describe the experience as, imagine Neorealism merged with the haunting poetry of David Lynch - if he were a Communist. From the very first frame, the skill of Kalatozishvili and his crew give the minute stories, stories that could easily disappear in the annals of history, an epic, high stakes, high drama, larger-than-life feel.
Long takes and handheld are the tenets driving the film’s visual framework. Never going out of vogue, even today, somewhat to my annoyance, a gang of filmmakers continue to eschew tripods and dollies for the "realism" handheld brings. Many times to the film’s detriment.
Not in this case, since the film obviously set new standards for its day. It’s a sixties-developed trend (French New Wave, Cinema Verite, European, Italian filmmakers) which was and is ultimately still firmly embraced by Hollywood, independents, and world cinema today. The visual foundation roams in free range, presenting its own moral compass in a heavy handed, self-assured manner.
Arriving at unexpected moments, the multi-layered sound design is another strong note of interest, adding to the film’s mysterious ambience.
An attack with teeth and sharp acrobatic movements.
You experience some of the pained history figuratively and literally. Some might brush the film off as pure rhetoric but with history to back up elements of the film, like Stone’s JFK, it’s as much a socially important revelation, as cinematic experience.
© by Julian Boyance, finished September 10th, 2004
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 Printable Version
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Production Companies
Gosudarstvenii Komitet po Kinematografii (Goskino [II]) [suhh]
Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industrias Cinematográficos (ICAIC) [cu]
Distributors
Criterion Collection [us] (USA) (laserdisc)
MK2 Diffusion [fr]
Milestone Film & Video [us] (1995) (USA) (subtitled)
Mongrel Media [ca] (Canada) (video)
Other Companies
Kinostudiya "Mosfilm" [suhh] production unit
For further reading: http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/23/iamcuba.html
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