I Am Cuba (1964)
Communism always did look attractive…
Presentation:
The 50s and 60s are what I sometimes like to call the era of Cold War cinema since it seems as though they were using this theatrical medium to battle out their political ideologies. Soy Cuba is a nationalist independent art house film with a communist doctrine. Its critique of western capitalism is not easy to take seriously with laughably cartoonish capitalist villains in contrast with the exploited noble farmers. There is a certain pleasure seeing this film’s DNA through all of Spanish cinema. Visually this film is incredible and has a significant influence on Emmanuel Lubezki through its use of handheld ultra wides and dutch angles. I think there may be more tilted shots than there are leveled ones. This and the indie presentation aptly conveys the guerrilla style of the revolutionaries and makes you cheer for the underdogs. I just wish there was a better restoration of this film because as beautiful as some of the framing is, the low resolution image quality is difficult to appreciate.
Conclusion:
I like that there is some continuity with the interlinking stories, but to be honest I found my attention and empathy spread thin across the multiple short character arcs. It was a visually noisy film that glazed me over, but might hold over better for Gen Z’ers. For a film as visually tasteful as this, I found the dogma in this film to be not subtle at all, basically on par with Chinese films. If you hate capitalism, I don’t think there is much to hate about this film. If you are a proponent of it, I think you can still enjoy the artistic cinematography. As beautiful as the film is, there’s no denying that this is a propaganda piece disguised as an artistic nationalist film.
Recommendations
A metaphor you’ll be burning to discuss.