
When we’re making our way through Criterion Month, there’s always the chance that some of the films we watch will feel a little like homework. So far, none of the movies I’ve reviewed have felt that way, since they’ve been to at least some extent, pretty entertaining. I Am Cuba, a joint production between Cuba and the Soviet Union, falls a bit into that category, since it’s a movie that really makes you use your brain while watching it, forcing you to grapple with the ideas behind it as well as the challenging style in which it chooses to express those ideas. Though at the same time, that style is pretty electric and innovative, so there is something inherently exciting about the way it forces you to do a little homework.
I think it’s a film that also requires a little homework on the part of the viewer in terms of learning a bit about the making of the film to truly appreciate it. I can’t say I took full advantage of the special features on the Criterion Channel, now available because of the blu-ray set that was released earlier this year, since I’m not exactly swimming in time to watch and review these movies. But, the gist of what I know is that the film was made shortly after the communist revolution in Cuba, and at the time, the Soviet Union was an ally of Castro’s regime. So, a film crew led by director Mikhail Kalatozov (who had just come off of the Palme d’Or-winning The Cranes Are Flying) was sent off to Cuba to make a film that promoted communist ideas in a Cuban context.
What they made is a film that is… sort of that. I Am Cuba is certainly about communist ideas like revolution and the exploitation of the working class by the bourgeoisie, but it goes about it in a fairly esoteric, artsy way that makes it easy to see why neither the Cuban or Soviet governments were particularly pleased with it (though Che Guevarra was apparently a fan). The film feels a bit like a series of connected poems, as it’s held together by a voiceover attributed to the country of Cuba itself, as it often exclaims “I Am Cuba” while extolling the different virtues of the country and its history. Though the film often feels like a documentary, it is ultimately a work of fiction, composed of four different stories with varying degrees of thematic connection.
It’s a little hard to describe exactly what each story in I Am Cuba is about, since none of them really have super distinct characters or arcs, but more feel like a series of events unfolding while a cameraman just happened to be around to capture them. The early scenes of the movie involve our wandering camera gliding down a river on a boat, before we’re taken to the top of a building in Havana, where we see a group of musicians playing hopped-up jazz, before we’re then plunged into a swimming pool stories below.
This then leads to the story of a prostitute named Betty in a nightclub getting picked up by a much wealthier man, who is then shown the squalid conditions of the slum she lives in. The next story involves a farmer’s crops being taken over by a large fruit company, which inspires the farmer to burn the entire plantation to the ground. The next story, which is probably the most memorable, involves a group of students involved in Cuba’s reactionary activities, though they run into trouble with the police, which eventually snowballs into a large-scale riot. Then there’s the final (and least memorable) story, which involves another farmer, this one whose home is destroyed when the military is bombing the area, which compels him to meet up with a band of rebels hiding in the mountains and march toward Havana in the name of Castro’s revolution.
What I haven’t delved into too much is just how ambitious and distinctive the cinematography in I Am Cuba is. Basically, all of the camera work is done in this handheld style that makes every scene incredibly kinetic, using lots of close-ups and Dutch angles, while many of the shots are noticeably long and will bounce from character to character at a moment’s notice. There are also a few shots where the camera travels a very far distance geographically, and you just have to imagine all of the various jerry-rigging and hand-offs that happened between the film’s camera crew to make some of these shots come together. The film also employs a very specific wide-angle lens that gives the movie a unique look for its time, while the black and white images often feel very harsh, which creates for this strange dynamic of a film that feels very cinema verité and very stylish at the same time.
Because I Am Cuba was made when the United States had an embargo on Cuba, it wasn’t seen in the U.S. until the ’90s when Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola restored and released it. I have to wonder when the film made its way to Mexico, since its use of long handheld takes for dramatic effect reminds me a lot of the films of Alejandro González Iñárritu or Alfonso Cuarón. It’s this modern style that makes the film feel very vital even if the film’s leanings into propaganda and ruminations on Cuba during this period can make it a little hard to sink your teeth into. This is one of those films where I struggle with what to do as far as a star rating, since it is a bit uneven and almost certainly too long. But the moments that hit truly embody the possibilities of radical filmmaking and instill that real “viva la revolución” spirit.