Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

Jacomedi A Surprisingly Unforgettable Movie!

Bergorks If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

socrates99 First, the artistry is too intimidating. It'd be like promoting Dostoyevsky to Dickens fans. Some of the scenes are so beguiling they defy adequate description. But some will think it much too slow, which might have been a good point if it hadn't taken place on a Caribbean island. I was made to feel what it was like to do the tedious work of cutting sugar cane all day and then be thrown into so much despair, you feel you must strike out.Cuba before the revolution was deeply involved with gangsters and criminals, but this film makes no mention of them, showing Batista and American sailors and businessmen as the bad men, mindlessly exploiting the grinding poverty reserved for the peasants. The real delight of this movie is the awe inspiring photography, and especially, the long, no-cut scenes done in an era before steady cams and lightweight equipment. Apparently it was all done with infrared film which the Soviet military had available in abundance. (The greenery is often white as a result.) Regardless, it's really enough to recommend it highly as you will wonder at times why we were denied such beautiful work all these years.

Jakarejo I had the great displeasure of sitting through this piece of rubbish film. Yes, I know it is supposed to be historical, it is a Soviet-Cuban propaganda film and the camera work is supposed to be fantastic. This film only appeals to ignorant students who think they know more than anybody because they "are for the people and justice" and communists. As Billy Joel once said, "I had my pointless point of view." ALL the scenes are way too long, hammering the point home in 20 minutes when it was understood in 3 minutes. The nightclub singer repeating Crazy Love so many times you go loco, following the student revolutionary for 20 minutes through a building and up to the roof, a guy running through plants for 10 minutes, come on, enough! I bring this up because both the writer and the director are applauded as fantastic when their work, propaganda or not, is worse than an Adam Goldberg family video. Please don't waste your time with this film. Go get experimental brain surgery instead.

dilan_abey There is a story from the early days of motion pictures, when crowds of people would shriek because a film of a train coming towards the camera was shown. Film is the most powerful of all the arts precisely because of its command over, and our necessarily intimate relationship with, vision. Soy Cuba's occasional brilliance stems from this knowledge. It is not, however, a complete film, but a film of contradictions. It takes freely from verite and expressionism, is subtle and didactic, visually brilliant yet contains heavy- handed symbolism, is enigmatic but clichéd, manipulative and sincere but ultimately entirely engaging. It's a sprawling filmic essay arguing in favour of the revolution of '59 containing four stories that each detail an area of life that needed reform, and as such takes us from the ghettos of Havana to the mountain areas – if it wasn't as interested in the lives of the proletariat, it could be considered an epic. In the end though it is the virtuosity of the cinematography that binds the film together, each story containing brilliantly conceived and executed sequences of visual beauty. This is a film that could have been a masterpiece, but for the overriding ideological aims which often take too much precedence. At its finest, particularly in the first story, this is a film of immense beauty. From the very opening shots, Kalatozov introduces us to what will be the defining style of the film: long, unbroken shots that can seemingly reveal to us any part of this world; he positions us from 'God's eye view', allowing us to move in and out of the images. We are shown the countryside of Cuba, then its canals and finally a swinging party in Havana. At this point no narrative is introduced, and we are asked to merely observe the events we are witnessing; the contrast of the poor countryside to the decadence of Havana offers more than enough of an argument. When we finally do begin the narrative, we follow the character of Maria/Betty as American businessmen in a Cuban brothel/nightclub exploit her. The key to the success of this chapter is that Kalatozov trusts his camera to tell the story – the subtle and convincing naturalistic acting of the cast works perfectly against the enigmatic camera work (in a way, this kind of acting is entirely necessary, for the camera work is so planned, choreographed and manipulated that the naturalism of the performances acts as its anchor). When we see the change of the Maria character, we understand perfectly what has caused it and feel great empathy for her situation. Considering how little time we have spent with her, and how little we know about her biographically, this is a tremendous achievement and one brought about by its lack of didacticism; by allowing the camera to tell the story rather than dialogue, we are forced into engaging with her situation. Unfortunately, this quality of understatement is one that is lost in the rest of the film. Even towards the end of the Maria chapter, we have an exchange involving a cross, which is so explicit in its symbolism that it momentarily undoes the prior good work. This affliction occurs constantly in the next three stories, where dialogue is used to offer us chunks of ideology. Consider the farmer who is told by the landowner that he does not own the land, or the man in the mountain who is told reasons for why the rebels are good for him and his family. The frustration with this didactic dialogue is that is, by and large, unnecessary. Such is the visual skill of the director, as in the first story, we could have easily done without most of the dialogue, and the film would have been equally as comprehensible intellectually, and immeasurably more engaging emotionally. Yet despite this, each of the other stories contain spectacular sequences and moments. Consider the over exposed film used in the second story which make the sugarcane appear ethereally white, yet the sunny day behind menacingly black. Or the shot from a high angle of the dead revolutionary on the street, a crowd of people circling him as his revolutionary pamphlets float in the air, their shadows covering his body. Or take the funeral scene in the third story, which is perhaps one of the great sequences in film. Here we see a camera move with such independence and ease that, 50 years later, it is still mind- blowing. When Soy Cuba trusts its visuals to tell its story, it is quite brilliant, but unfortunately, as is often the case, ideology trumps all else.

michaelrhames An amazing film. That Yevteshenko sat down and put the ideology of Cuban and Russian understanding into perspective for the world is beyond much literal beauty. People need to wake up and get a hold of this movie, especially since the subject of Cuba is only poorly touched on in most places. "I Am Cuba" introduces viewers to a culture, a system and a country that possesses a unique beauty and an ethical, well educated mentality, despite its struggles and poverty. It teaches us that Cuban people struggle with dignity and self awareness, much like what can be seen in many Alea films. The world looks at Cuba with ignorant eyes, but Cuban cinema can easily correct our initial judgment. "I Am Cuba" was for a long time the most exquisite portrayal of Cuban culture I had seen, with a careful and original story that could not have been imagined in another society. But while the shots are gorgeous and the story compelling, for today's Cuban Talent fanatics I highly recommend a VLaMarko play in the city. "I Am Cuba" is hard to create on the stage, but the young Cuban writer seems to derive a lot of influence from Russian and Chilean literature, particularly Yevtushenko for his first production. Both of these monuments display a Cuba still ripe with revolution, humanity and struggle among beauty, although made nearly half a century apart. Thumbs up+++++