Rating: 
Summary: Distortion Well Packaged
Review: Two undeniable facts: First, "I Am Cuba" is a cinematic triumph. Second, it is totalitarian propaganda of the highest and most dishonest order.
First, Mikhail Kalatzov comes from the school of Eisenstein, the present work highly reminiscent of the earlier director's films glamorizing the Russian revolts which led to the revolution. Kalatzov outstrips Eisenstein in that he uses a greater economy of movement, lenses and film types having greatly improved by 1964, not to mention directorial technique. Certain of the peasant scenes early in the film are reminiscent of Eisenstein's earlier filming in Mexico, which would lead to the eventual assembly and release of the masterpiece "Que Viva Mexico" ("Mexican Fantasy") in 1979. Could Kalatzov have seen Eisenstein's unedited rushes prior to 1964? No matter how much one may admire Kalatzov's "The Cranes are Flying," it is obvious that he has become incredibly dexterous in this film. The cinematic work is stunning.
Second, propagandists need to be more careful so as not to be so transparent in their disingenuousness. In this respect, "I Am Cuba" is an odious example of the fabricated record of how something did not happen. One need only read the works of and interviews with Fidel Castro to know that the movie is largely fiction. For example, he certainly did not have the sympathy of the students upon his landing in Oriente; the students were sceptical, considering Fidel had led scores of students to their certain death only a few years before with his disastrous storming of the barracks at Santiago. Nor did he have the support of Cuba's communists until well after the taking of Havana and the institutionalization of the revolution.
As Fidel likes to say the revolution only began with the taking of Cuba, that it continues to this day, one awaits the sequel. For in the present work, one must be amused at the cartoon presentation of the Americans in Havana, when the more sinister aspects of the mafia could have been shown. A "Child of...." follow-up would of necessity have to back up his claim that the Americans are still responsible for his revolution's failure. Another example is that, as Che Guevara had fallen from Fidel's and Moscow's favor by 1964, he is represented only in the penultimate chapter, when shown ever so discreetly in the Sierra Maestra instructing in communism the adolescent boys he so favored. "Child of...." would have to show Che as chief magistrate of the tribunal which executed over a thousand grudge match "criminals" after Fidel's victory. The revolution simply did not happen as the film depicts.
Just as Nietzche wrote of the genealogy of morals, so too is there a family tree of indecency masquerading as the moral. The film fails to relate that Fidel, when tried for the barracks disaster, resulting in over 60 immediate deaths and subsequent executions of those innocents, confronted the judges in a long speech in which he used the same declaration given a few short decades before by his hero, Adolf Hitler, proclaiming, "History will absolve me." The film fails to relate how Fidel had carried a worn copy of Mein Kampf during his undergraduate term at the University of Havana.
Unfortunately, it is the second aspect which foils the first. The tendency of totalarian regimes to create myths to support their glories, when the fabric of the truth is soiled, can only lead to eventual ridicule by scholars. In this respect, all of this film's cinematic achievements are betrayed by the embarrassing absence of truth and mythical fabrication.
It's like that attractive box of cereal at the super market, its glitzy colors gripping the eye, until you read the nutritional panel, revealing it to be but junk food, loaded with calories, sugar and carbs. In this instance, you find a box which fails to tell of how one tyranny replaced another, the latter even more destructive than the former.
Finally, just why and how did Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese get mixed-up in this nonsense? One can only admire and thank them for their involvement with Akira Kurosawa years before. Their roles as promoters of this film unfortunately tarnishes their images, making them to appear no more than caricatures of the usual Hollywood leftist camp.
Ah, well, just as Prokofiev and Shostakovich were under the thumb of Stalin, so too Kalatzov had to endure Khrushchev in 1964. One can only take heart that this film is not so well known as to besmirch his cinematic finery in "The Cranes are Flying."
Rating: 
Summary: Image's DVD transfer of a great film is for the dogs...
Review: Understand this: I am fanatical about this movie. But Image's DVD transfer is so painfully inept to watch -- horrid print, spots and speckles, strobing due to oddball frame rate, hideous contrast levels -- that I couldn't bear to watch the DVD beyond 10 minutes.The person responsible for such an incompetent and abysmal edition of this can't miss movie should be flayed alive in front of all true lovers of cinema. Image, which chopped 10 minutes out of JULIET OF THE SPIRITS despite the representations of the packaging, is the Good Times Video of DVD. That they would do such a worthless job for a Fellini film is cause for anger. That they would due this again to Kalazotov is sacrilegous.
Rating: 
Summary: astonishingly beautiful
Review: Unfortunately, the film is too long and its political content irritatingly simplistic (as one might expect, given that it was produced under the Soviet regime). In spite of these flaws, "I Am Cuba" is one of the most beautiful movies I have EVER seen, and most of it is delightful.
Rating: 
Summary: Beauty surpasses politics.
Review: Visually stunning. Four vignettes loosely strung together with a Pro-Castro theme. The first story about Maria and the contrast between her work and home is beautiful. I can watch it again and again without boredom and always find something new. This film should be required viewing for all film students, especially those wishing to direct music videos or epic features. So much can be said with images versus words as well as with natural locations versus Hollywood built sets. After viewing this, you may want to watch "Before Night Falls" with Javier Bardem. The contrast between Castro's propaganda in I AM CUBA and Castro's reality in BEFORE NIGHT FALLS illustrates a lesson that every aspiring revolutionary should consider.
Rating:
Summary: AUTEURS WITH A MOVIE CAMERA
Review: VIVA LA REVOLUCION! So close to America, so far away from Mother Russia, I AM CUBA attempts to capture the essence of the communistic brother-other of the island nation. Set in the bad old days of the Batista regime, this amazing artifact of the Cold War follows four narrative vignettes dealing with the events that led to the 1963 revolution. The movie was supposed to be a paean to Fidel and 'la revolucion,' but one suspects that its true subject is the camera as it madly spins and spins and romances the Cuban landscape with how-did-they-did-that long takes. The film is a direct descendant of Eisenstein's QUE VIVA MEXICO, in terms of exoticizing a distant foreign land through the movies. This time around however, the director Kalazatov, cinematographer Urusevsky, and the poet Yevtushenko are the Soviet men with a movie camera. Both Kalazatov and Urusevsky are no amateurs. They were responsible for the acclaimed THE CRANES ARE FLYING. Yet one can't help but wonder what went wrong as this relentlessly visual documentary appears to undercut its ideological thesis by a long take or any number of camera acrobatics. 'Dios mio,' I AM CUBA remains to be seen to be believed! It is a deliriously inventive documentary that blurs the line between propaganda and art, with history repeating in the eye of the camera. VIVA EL CINEMA!
Rating:
Summary: viva cuba!
Review: What on earth does the guy from new york mean? 'The disaster Havana has become' ?! Have you EVER been?! Havana is STILL beautiful!
Rating:
Summary: Yes it's propaganda, but it's also a great film
Review: When one watches this, it is important to be aware that this film is pro-Castro propaganda and that the Castro regime did not completely eradicate the ills of the Cuban people seen in this film. But like "Birth of a Nation," "Potempkin,"etc. the film is great once you put the politix and true history aside. The scene with the city uniting behind the martyred anti-Batista student is breathtaking, although the final scenes with the march of the Fidelistas is a bit long to make it's point. But anyway, that aside,see it and think.
Rating:
Summary: Why have you dopes put this in the Spain Categorgy?
Review: Why have you dopes put this in the Spain Categorgy?Why have you dopes put this in the Spain Categorgy?Why have you dopes put this in the Spain Categorgy?Why have you dopes put this in the Spain Categorgy?Why have you dopes put this in the Spain Categorgy?Why have you dopes put this in the Spain Categorgy?Why have you dopes put this in the Spain Categorgy?Why have you dopes put this in the Spain Categorgy?Why have you dopes put this in the Spain Categorgy?Why have you dopes put this in the Spain Categorgy?Why have you dopes put this in the Spain Categorgy?Why have you dopes put this in the Spain Categorgy?Why have you dopes put this in the Spain Categorgy?
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