I Am Cuba – The Ultimate Edition (Milestone DVD Set/New Yorker Films)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: B Film: B
It is a
rare situation and when it happens, it can produce a one-of-a-kind classic or a
giant disaster. Imagine being in the
enviable position of making a film with no set budget, any actors & extras
you wanted, no expense spared and support all around because it was hoped that
the film would be a big hit. If it is a
Hollywood production, you get financing backed by a major studio or two. In the case of James Cameron’s Titanic, the biggest-budgeted film of
all time became the biggest grossing of all time, even if that is unadjusted
dollars. In the case of Michael Cimino’s
bold and daring Heaven’s Gate, it
becomes a latter-day classic, though it also caused its studio to file for
bankruptcy. But what if it is a
government-sponsored film, especially one that is communist/socialist?
Leni
Riefenstahl had this happen a few times with and for Hitler, then the other
evil modern superpower that was The USSR/Soviet Union also supported a few such
projects. Just after The Cuban Missile
Crisis almost ended the world, the USSR and Cuba collaborated on a new film
that would try new things, yet be an extension of past Soviet Cinema
innovations (from Eisenstein, Kuleshov, Pudovkin, etc.) with new ideas and
variants to show off how great both Cuba and the results of their socialist
revolution supposedly was. So the
filming was on. The only catch: if the
governments did not like the film, they could shelve it!
Mikhail
Kalatozov had a surprise international success with his 1957 hit film The Cranes Are Flying, despite
government misgivings, so he was chosen as the director of the film that became
I Am Cuba. As is the case with the all such propaganda
films, the conclusion is obvious and predictable, decorated with endless
distracting allusions to justice, glory and a perceived better life. In this case, the individual is not only
ignored, but negated at every point.
Except when someone suffers alone, they are soon joined by fellow
countrymen to help or avenge them. Even
in all this, even when the film peaks in number of extras, the real star is the
land and country, thus the title. It
supposedly belongs to the people, all people and because of the revolution; a
new “exciting” way of life has finally begun.
This is
achieved in the film in four parts, as even the narrative cannot be individual
and must be woven out of many. This can
be seen only as a poem and the film certainly qualifies as a poem, but it adds
up to the same message in all four sub-storylines: The U.S. and capitalism is both bad and
criminal. Sure, the U.S. was not perfect
and backing Batista, underestimated how quickly native Cubans would get sick of
him, making him vulnerable. Though we do
not see this in the film, the opposition even used suicide bombers to win and
they did.
But that
is just one of the many problems with the film.
Death and sacrifice, even at its worst, is stylized, often cleaned up
and with the fisheye lens almost surreal in ways that equate some kind of state
religion. Ironically, though Castro was
the father figure of the revolution, his presence is highly minimal despite his
approval and having Che Guevara on the set, if not on camera.
The
film’s form turns the harsh realities of the Kino Eye of the 1930s into a
communist version of a god’s eye point of view, whether it is supposed to be
the actual country Cuba having a life of its own and can see these things or be
a new, more natural eye of a new truth of revolution and maybe the future.
The
result of the production was a 140 minutes journey to an imagined Cuba before
and after. Shots of nature are both
natural and also made to be surreal in more than a few scenes and the many air-bound
shots suggest a lack of gravity which is supposed to translate into a higher
sense of being and knowledge that had never been seen in either cinema
before. Gone was Eisenstein’s montage
theory, though the functions work almost the same.
The
scenes of U.S. decadence, littered with U.S. gangsters as if they were
inseparable from the actual government or corporations like United Fruit,
unintentionally glorify the lifestyle.
The way the gangsters talk and act are the most dated aspect of the
film, especially post Coppola Godfather,
but we know what they mean for propaganda purposes despite their origins in
U.S. Film Noirs the makers may have had the chance to see here and there. They are still B-movie characters, which
imply reductionism as evil. Cuba and
those who fight for revolution succeed in being the true humans and no other
Americans/Westerners/Capitalists are possible.
Because
of the glorifying of the capitalist lifestyle and continuous urging of more
revolution marching and freedom of camera innovations among other things, the
USSR decided to shelve the film permanently and except for some showing in
closed Cuba, the film was lost for three decades before being unearthed by
Milestone in 1995. Outside of the
obvious failures of socialism, communism, the revolution and the collapse of
the USSR, the films better aspects now stand out much more from a technical and
naturalistic perspective.
Ironically,
Cuba the country is still hanging in
there as Castro barely holds onto power 44 years later even after endless attempts
on his life. With his brother ready to
take over and continue their form of socialism, as well as remaining the only
country ever to defy the U.S. sphere of influence, the fantasy of that
revolution gave way to the cold reality that Fidel Castro was nothing but a
cold dictator who kills, tortures, censors and rules in any lawless way he
pleases. Even Michael Moore’s Cuban
segment of Sicko (2007) could not
cover up the poor condition of the country and unlike this film, all of his
footage is very staged-looking, no matter how amusing or what points it makes
about corporate health care fraud in the United States.
Sadly, I Am Cuba was the end of true
filmmaking innovation on its high level in either country. While Cuban films became one issue, the USSR’s
Mosfilm decided on a crazy campaign to show that they could be as big as
Hollywood. Besides Kalatozov’s The Red Tent (reviewed elsewhere on
this site) being a Sovscope 70mm production and his last film, as he died soon
after, a filmmaking microcosm of the space and arms race began in which the
USSR tried to prove they could outdo Hollywood at its best (deluded by the idea
that the studios were collapsing in larger ways than they actually were) with
more big 70mm epics (many of which were shown in the U.S. in limited ways, most
of which were overproduced turkeys) and genre films (from Science Fiction to
Westerns) leading to Andrei Tarkovsky having constant run ins with the forces
that be for his great films life Andrei
Roublev and the original Solaris
(also reviewed on this site).
But now, I Am Cuba can takes its place with the
lost classics could have been lost forever.
If the USSR and Castro had decided to destroy all prints and that had
happened, this would have been lost forever.
Now, you can see the propaganda that almost was and the risk-taking,
ambitious filmmaking that is. With
actually Hollywood product (and sadly by association, most independent
production to boot) you can see what pure filmmaking was taking place
here. They started from scratch and came
up with some interesting results, even when they did not know what would or
would not be accepted or acceptable. It
was never so wild that anyone was executed, though in the USSR/Castro
tradition, that too could have happened.
Instead, the celebration of a dream became its end and when the truth
soon settled, all this film could do was sit in darkness on a shelf. Now, it is a record of one of the biggest
lies of all time.
The 1.33
X 1 black and white image is the best looking of the three versions to appear
in an optical disc format. The film was
first issued in the 12” LaserDisc format by Criterion, then on DVD in a single
disc edition distributed by Image Entertainment. Milestone has owned the rights all this time
and now, through New Yorker Film, they have created a new High Definition
master that makes the previous versions pretty obsolete. Director of Photography Sergei Urusevsky and
camera operator Alexander “Sasha” Calzatti (who had worked with Eisenstein) created
groundbreaking shooting with a 9.8mm lens that has a semi-fisheye effect and
was usually shot with a hand-held Éclair, but instead of shaky camerawork for
no good reason, there is something this kind of hand-held offers in what the
film is trying to say and though it is 30 years late in reaching the rest of
the world, the work still holds up remarkably well and is bound to become
permanent cinematic visual language as much as Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin has for over 80
years.
The Dolby
Digital 2.0 Mono is far better than the Dolby 1.0 Mono the old Image DVD had
and is just outright cleaner and clearer than the previous DVD. What little dialogue is here suddenly becomes
clearer and other aspects like sound effects and music suddenly do not seem as
old.
Extras
are terrific, come in a very nice box and include two bonus DVDs: one offers
the 2005 documentary Siberian Mammoth,
director’s Vincente Ferraz’s impressive look at the making of Cuba and a half-hour 2004 interview
with Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko, who wrote the film. The third DVD is of the two-hour A Film About Mikhail Kalatozov, on his
life of filmmaking including the making of Cuba. The first disc with the film includes three
stills sections, the 1995 U.S. Milestone release trailer and a priceless examination
of the film by Martin Scorsese. There is
also a great 12-page booklet (in color on very high quality paper) called I Am
Cuba: The True Story with essays, quotes and information on the film,
for which I can only take issue with on two erroneous facts.
Page 7,
paragraph 4 states that Cuba was one
of the first films to use infrared film for shooting, but science fiction films
like the Flash Gordon serials were using such stocks to portray other-worlds in
the 1930s. The use of filters and
different stocks were new, but not the type of stock. Two paragraphs later, the same essay states
that the Cuba crew was the first to
use a closed camera television/video system to shoot two decades before
Hollywood did. However, Jerry Lewis was
doing the same thing at the same time with early videotape to speed up his
shoots because of his Vegas stand-up schedule.
Otherwise,
this is a very well-rounded special edition set and could go a few rounds with
any others out there pertaining to art and foreign films such as this. Also, I
have grown to like this film all the more in the years since I first viewed it
and can see how it immediately affected Scorsese starting with Casino and going into Kundun and The Aviator. However, its
influence is far from over and you too should catch it as soon as possible,
especially in this set or especially if you are a filmmaker.
- Nicholas Sheffo
