I Am Cuba

No less than thirty shots have been ripped off from this movie in the past five years, in films like Out of Sight, Boogie Nights, and Pulp Fiction. Watching "I Am Cuba" is an education in film technique and the beauty of the eponymous country. The picture's plot is abysmal. It is an exercise in cinematography. It is among the most influential movies, style-wise, that the American public has never seen and honestly brilliant on all terms.

Imagine taking a tour of Cuba, in 1964, through the eyes of four metaphors: luxury, poverty, revolution, and vagrancy. Times are changing, the country is changing. However, no matter how much anything changes, the sun-soaked gorgeousness of the land doesn't budge. The camera glides around like a member of the tour who has gone off on his own, looking at the four principles.

I Am Cuba is film that needs no hyperbole. It Is Great

I am Cuba/Soy Cuba features the stories of several Cuban citizen-types: a young prostitute, a farmer, a young revolutionary and so on, up to the start of the island's Castro Revolution.

If this sounds dull, then rest assured that the plot is minimal and, despite it's avowedly political purpose, hardly gets in the way of the film's main attractions today. What distinguishes the production is the cinematography. It is not an exaggeration to say that the images and technique in the film are breathtaking, and it is a tour-de-force of bravura camera work. Apparently Martin Scorcese has screened this film privately to work out how such-and-such a shot was achieved, and perhaps it's influence can be found in the famous through-the-kitchens tracking shot in 'Goodfellas'.

This is a film where the camera is constantly in motion, with sweeping balletic long takes, crane and hand held shots, tracking shots, including some over and down the side of buildings, through cane fields, into swimming pools, around packed night clubs, even hovering and moving along high over a street in the middle of a packed funeral procession - all without the usual cutting. I estimate the average length of a take in this film at about 2 - 3 minutes, a figure rare and astonishing these days, even with the benefit of steadicams - but jaw dropping given the still-unwieldy equipment they were surely using in 1964. In particular one or two large scale sequences must have taken days, if not weeks, to prepare, and presumably needed government marshaling to choreograph. (Ironically, whether or not the film makers intended it, the liberated camera work on display here reflects the notion of revolutionary freedom far more than the actual story vignettes.)

The film itself is shot in high contrast gleaming black and white, favouring wide angle lenses, and with a constant deep focus that reminded me of Greg Toland's work for Welles or some of James Wong Howes' work. Kalatozov's use of a handful of character 'types' throughout recalls Eisenstein's (and in fact there is a faint reference to his the Odessa Steps sequence in 'Battleship Potemkin' at one point when the revolutionary rioters march down some steps), but the effect here is far more sensual and lyrical. (Among the professional actors, Sergio Corrieri also appears in the better-known Memories of Underdevelopment). The film's 'artiness' is undeniably a distraction from the message of struggle, and to the original viewers the beautiful images must have been a long way from reality in the New Cuba.

Today we don't have this problem and the viewer is left with a visual feast to enjoy over and over again..

One of the advantages of making a propaganda film in communist countries is that you have full support of the government that you are favoring. With that in mind, it's no wonder that a film of this magnitude could be made only in a communist country (before it went bankrupt). Soy Cuba surprises the viewer over and over again as you expect the camera to cut, and just as you expect it to, it doesn't and whoosh, you're underwater, or you've just flown out a window and hover above a funeral procession of massive proportions. I ponder the planning it must have taken to concoct such long takes with each moment so thoughtfully planned out. As much as most people will credit this film with fabulous cinematography (which it arguably has), it is a direct result of the complex direction by Mikheil Kalatozishvili that gives the film its flow and strength. Long takes become boring if the rhythm of the film is not well choreographed (some Tarkovsky films have this problem, but not all). Soy Cuba is never boring. Of course, what is most interesting is to see Havana in all it's beauty just after Fidel's revolution and then to contrast that with the Cuba seen in Buena Vista Social Club. It says it all about the politics of this film. This one is purely worth watching for the choreography and cinematography, not for the silly ideology. This is required viewing for all filmmakers.

That I've ever seen, and I watch a lot of movies. The story is propaganda, to be sure, and some of the acting is horrible, but WOW! I couldn't take my eyes off of it. Shot after stunning shot....I don't know how they did it, but I didn't mind all the rhetoric because I kept thinking, "Look, that's so beautiful" and "Wow, how did they do that?" I do recommend it also as a historical document of a time most people don't remember....I was born the year it was made and remember "the Communist Threat" but I think a lot of people younger than myself may not remember.

Not to mention that yes, some of the music was also amazing. A must see for any serious film buff.

Is this the best film ever made? For me today in its afterglow it is.

I'm so fickle. I think if all else were equal, I'll always take embodied, real cinema that is coherently integrated. The way of telling the story is ideally complex and folded, using tricks to make the story matter. But if the storytelling is less spectacular, as long as the thing engages, that's what matters. If it changes me, its art and important, regardless of whether I can tell a good story about the storytelling.

That's the way I prefer. But sometimes the storytelling is so spectacular, so engaging in itself, that it doesn't matter what the story is. These are rare, because after all, you need the touch to change your life. So a filmmaker as unsophisticated and unattractive as, say Elia Kazan, can modify my existence when partnered with Williams and Brando.

And this story... what is conveyed here is mostly lies. Or rather it is a target story that is transparently bankrupt. Its based on an embodied reality of sorts. But its a twisted vision. The racism is palpable. The superiority of the European eye and mind are overwhelming. The simple notion of good and evil is less nuanced than in Star Wars or its predecendent westerns, and is intolerable. (This may be simply because history advises that both the Soviet and Cuban experiments were more brutal than what they replaced.)

But what cinema! What life! Just inhabiting this world has adjusted my imagination and dreams. The focus is usually on the extraordinary flying camera, because its so obvious, striking. It is, and if it were just that, I would still get you out of bed and across town to see this. But the flying eye is integrated with an architectural expression that is far deeper. The actors and camera move through buildings, fire, smoke, cane, trees, exploding dirt. This is as amazing the first time, just in wondering how they did it. Knowing the technology used, it seems impossible, and that knowledge actually distracts. You have to see this several times to just get past the wonder at the talking dog.

Then you can get into the visual poetry of thing. It isn't about people at all. They matter not at all except as fodder for ennobling posters. What matters is the structure of the forces that surround and channel them here and there like turbulent banks. This is a project centered on those forces, incarnated as spatial forces. Where in another project you wonder how a dog can be so dramatic, here you wonder how the director was able to control fire and smoke to be so perfectly compliant. Its not embodied in the story, which is daft, but in the real world that contains it.

This is absolutely in the spirit of Tarkovsky, and is the only film I know that betters him visually. Its less human, but oh so spatial. You must, must see it.

Ted's Evaluation -- 4 of 3: Every cineliterate person should experience this.