Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

Plantiana Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

jfarms1956 I am Cuba is a movie best enjoyed by adults, 18 and older, who either enjoy "artsy" films, are artists in the film industry, are artists in other genres, and who enjoy the "different" kind of film. This is certainly the "different" kind of film. Since I don't belong to any of the aforementioned categories, I did not appreciate the artistic nature of the film nor the film itself. I found the film meaningless and rambling through the scenes. The music was okay. The movie was incredibly long, I think the film should have been edited down to one hour. I wouldn't bother with this film unless you like to torture yourself with something "different" for a change. Remember, different does not mean better in this case. Eat your whole dinner through this one. You won't miss a thing.

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.

cynthiahost Whats really different form a dictatorship centered around greed or one that's in the name of the people.Both are bad and Cuba is still not democratic yet.But this movie is good.Created in a documentary type style.At first I was surprised how it began , knowing that this was a communistic propaganda film,or seems that way.The modern hotel sequence .The beauty contest and the rock music.It later dawn on me that this was about Cuba in it's first dictatorship,right before more corruption.Baptista and Castro .Whats the difference?It first it starts out with a women name Maria who is forced to do prostitution to make end meet.Her boyfriend who sells fruit on the street wants to marry her in the church.But she reject him He eventually finds out when he goes to her hut with bananas and the tourist leaves.Then the tourist faces poverty every where .Children asking of money from him.The narrator states You want fun? that's fine but there's poverty too.Then the next story is a struggling sugar cane farmer and his two grown children.He has been struggling to grow sugarcane .He finally has done it.With his two children help they start chopping it down.everything looks good until the men he got the loan from take his land away from him,then theirs an attempt by an anti Baptista activist to assassination one of the officials.A student protest that leads to death.I don't know how the filmmaker got away with this.since it criticized the poverty that still existed after Castro.It really has not gotten better.Although years later Castro would allow the gambling place and more night clubs to reopen for the tourist economy.But it's difficult to visit and really it's not worth it,to give money to a dictatorship. 08/12/12

Joseph Sylvers Maybe one of the best movies ever made! I think I could watch Kalatozishvili (say it three times fast) film grass grow and be spellbound. The camera literally dances, and is a character in it's own right.Four stories about the Cuban life before, during, and ending with the revolution. We see the Havana nightclub prostitute (the films most dazzling moments, like coming to Cuba for the firs time), a farmer whose loosing his land to US Fruit(the films most spiritual moment), a student activist poised to be a terrorist or a martyrs, and a family man and pacifist driven to war...but who cares! This is not an effective propaganda film because by the end of the movie, your not so much mad at the big bad West, as you are just disappointed there isn't more. You care about the characters certainly, but you care about them as individuals, beset by the troubles of "life", and not as a faceless nation, engaging in a "fight". Propahganda to work needs a "them" for "us" to turn our attention towards, look at Micheal Moore's films, for examples of this. "I Am Cuba" has foreign and internal devils, but each story is told so well, you feel for the characters, and not some abstract notion of the "the Cuban people".The sheer cinematic strength of the film, it's composition, AMAZING tracking shots(ripped off by Paul Thomas Anderson, Martin Scorcesse, and Tartovsky, to name a few...they each steal scenes, and even then that's not half of the amazing images.), music, and performances are so good they transform and transcend the story. What Sergio Leone did for the Western in "Once Upon A Time In The West", and Stanley Kubrick did for science fiction in "2001: A Space Odyssey", is equivalent to what this film does for propaganda.Cuban public at the time though it was too stereotypical (a fair critique, the director and crew are mostly Russian), Soviets thought it was too soft on capitalism and the west, film makers everywhere I imagine wet themselves.Quite possibly one of the best films ever, never seen in the US, til the mid 90's. The portrayals of Americans are amusing to say the least (think of all those furry hated evil Russians in cold war movies to be fair. Think "Red Dawn" for Christ sakes) Anyway if you like "great films" see this, its exhilarating and beautiful, and as a whole it more than makes up for the sum of its parts. Incredible.