About I Am Cuba
I Am Cuba is a film of poetry and strikingly powerful imagery. The film does not possess anything resembling an actual plot or story, but is actually a string of four separate vignettes that come together to create a portrait of the heart of Cuba, its beauty, sensuality and passion, its madness, chaos and horror.
The films plays out with one vignette following another, each preceded by a stanza of poetic verses describing Cuba’s state, its people and its suffering, all beginning with the phrase, “I Am Cuba”. Every way of life is documented in this film, from the jungles to the slums, the cities to the farms and mountains. The film builds from a slow start in the beginning with an overhead shot of the Cuban jungle, to boiling point near the end with its depictions of riots, and to an explosive climax at the end where the Revolution is already in process. The vignettes depict, consecutively, a Cuban  prostitute’s struggle to lead a normal life as a woman; a farmer who, after losing his job because his land has been taken over by an American fruit company, is unable to feed his family; a conflicted member of a socialist group, who after having his friends killed, leads a revolt against the government; and an ignorant self-providing mountain habitant who joins the revolution after one of his children is killed in a bombing. Each of these segments portray, respectively, Cuba as a society corrupted by tourism, foreign industrialization, American imperialism and Cuba as a country in need of a social revolution. Though the stories are nothing new and are actually pretty simple, these vignettes, when put together, create a mesmerizing portrait of Cuba in its state of conflict.
Though the film takes place before the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the film was made five years after the overthrowing of the pro-U.S. government. Sure enough, the film features scenes that tell of the coming of the Revolution. Made in 1964 with the support of Russia, the film was to be a tool in the communists’ plan of promoting socialism to the world. Though this film comprises of an almost entirely Cuban cast, most of the significant crew members are Russian, including the acclaimed Russian director Mikhail Kalatozov, who earlier made the Palme d’Or winner, The Cranes Are Flying .
There are some interesting similarities between I Am Cuba and early Russian cinema. There is a scene in the film involving a riot which mirrors that of the Odessa steps sequence in Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin. Both scenes take place on a flight of steps and comprise of two separate mobs in a struggle that ends in bloodshed. Also, Kalatozov’s film went so far as to have hired some of the same crew members. It was also stated by the filmmakers that they aspired to recreate the same treatment Kalatozov applied when making his historic films. Furthermore, Vsevelod Pudovkin, one of Russian cinema’s founding fathers, believed that a good film is one that uses the camera without the logic of a human observer yet taking note of the camera’s mechanical and optical limitations, and the filmmakers of this film have obviously made use of his philosophy in its impossibly elaborate, and at times gravity-defying, cinematography.
The most obvious reason this film garnered the attention it did over the years was because of its absolutely breathtaking cinematography. But the film did not gain any sort of attention in the West until the early 90s because of the Cold War, which only ended in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was through happenstance that Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola caught a screening of the film in 1992 at the Telluride Film Festival and, astounded by their discovery, decided to revive it by restoring the film and releasing it in selected theatres and on video. The film is comprised of several long unbroken takes, which provide full depictions of the Cuban society of that time. These shots were almost impossible to film during its time as the Steadicam was yet to have been invented (the camera they used was a handheld Éclair). Yet, the camera moves with impeccable fluidity through different terrains because of the expertly shot choreography. Allow me to describe a scene from the film to show you what I’m talking about. We see a high-angle shot of a group of people on a roof, framed on pageant women parading about, then on a band that is playing. The camera then moves a few stories down the building, changes to low-angle framing, and then circles around a  swimming pool, passing through crowds of people, then slowly enters the pool. Throughout the entire sequence, the audience has no idea where the constantly-moving camera will go next, what environment they will be immersed in, creating a dynamic viewing experience.
It is amazing that the crew was able to pull these shots off considering their incredibly troubled shoot. When the Russian crew arrived in Cuba, they encountered many technical problems – the camera broke down on several occasions because of the tropical climate, they didn’t have access to labs, they had to constantly repair the camera themselves, etc. How they were still able to create such an incredible film is a testament to their creativity and temperament.
What makes this film unique compared to other communist films such as the early Russian films of Eisenstein and Pudovkin is that I Am Cuba seems to possess a more human point of view. This is not to say those other films are not ‘human’ stories, but that this film is able to involve us more in the characters’ struggles instead of focusing mainly on just the concepts of revolution.
Take the scene of a club in the film where a poor, reluctant Cuban prostitute, who already has a suitor she is fond of, is forced by her American client to dance with him. Reluctant at first, she then begins to dance, later by herself in an almost epileptic manner probably out of crazed anger and distress as the crowd of smiling Americans forces her to “Dance! Dance! Dance!” as tears streak across her face and her hand clutches her crucifix necklace. In this scene, the camera is almost always focused on her face in long takes where it follows her around a large area of the club as she is being tossed from one foreigner to another, stained with every touch, involving us in every second of her violation. After they leave the club, the client forces her to allow him to accompany her to her slum to have sex with her.
Sure, some may argue that this scene is manipulative and blatant in its message that Americans are the defilers of Cuban society, and I have to agree that this message is very much present in this scene and many other scenes as well. But the type of camerawork employed in the film enhances our feelings for this character. As human beings, it is impossible to ignore the similarities in what this woman is trying hard to hold onto and what we ourselves try hard to hold on to as well. We feel wholly sympathetic for her as we witness her dignity, her religion and her faith being taken from her from the cruelty of others.
Also, the vignettes are first and foremost not unreal in its depiction of what American colonization has made of countries such as Cuba. The film itself, though fictionalized, and perhaps exaggerated, is obviously still a document of the situations in Cuba during the pro- U.S. dictatorship and why its citizens had to start a Revolution in order to free themselves from the terror of their present world. Besides, if the film was purely a work of extreme fictional propaganda, which it is not (refer to note at the bottom of the article), the narrative and the stories it tells are still hugely involving and incredibly heart-rending.
Besides the influence of Russian cinema, the film also seems to be influenced by other film movements as well: French impressionism can be seen in the dancing sequence in the club; the themes and confines of Italian neorealist cinema also populate the film with its use of unprofessional actors, on-location shooting, and its depiction of the effects of poverty on society and its people.
As we all know by now, Fidel Castro has not made Cuba much better over the years. Some people feel that this makes the film irrelevant now in its message of the need of social revolution. But I do not agree. The film, I believe, is still a powerful social document and a rip-roaring example of virtuoso filmmaking.
Note: The first draft of the script was written as a direct translation of the events that occurred during the Cuban revolution, but the director and writer decided do away with this approach and decided to approach it in a more aesthetic way.
Written By: Lim Lung Chieh & Athalia Ho
References:
“I Am Cuba - Wikipedia”, October 2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_am_Cuba
“I Am Cuba – The Poetry of Revolution”, December 1998, http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/23/iamcuba/html |
