| Jasper Nordin |
I am Cuba plays on glorious 35mm at the Trylon Cinema from Sunday, July 28th, through Tuesday, July 30th. Visit trylon.org for tickets and more information.
Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me.
On July 26, 1953, the Cuban Revolution began. Fidel Castro, leading a force of 136 men, attacked the Moncada military barracks in the capital city of Havana. The goal of this attack was to instigate a wider revolt against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, and to gain control of the barrack’s arsenal to support the nascent revolutionary army. The operation was an unmitigated disaster, even in Castro’s own analysis. The revolutionaries failed to take control of the barracks or the weapons inside. Many were killed in the initial attack, more were executed afterward, and the rest, including Castro, were imprisoned.
The revolutionary army that toppled the comprador Batista regime nearly six years later called itself the 26th of July Movement in honor of Moncada. Despite the failure of Castro’s initial attempted uprising, the attack on the Moncada Barracks marks the beginning of the Cuban Revolution, as the event that resulted in the eventual liberation of Cuba from imperialist rule.
Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba is a document of the Cuban Revolution. Its protagonist is not Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, or any singular historical figure. Its subject is not a singular fictional character or even a specific episode in the Cuban Revolution. Its subject is Cuba itself, the Revolution itself; its protagonist is the Cuban people. Really, I Am Cuba can be understood as a biopic of the Cuban Revolution.
A joint effort between the Soviet and Cuban governments (and their state-run film industries), I Am Cuba follows in the tradition of the greatest Soviet filmmakers (Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov are clear influences) in applying Marxist-Leninist theory and practice into the process of filmmaking itself. The film is divided into four vignettes, each of which explore a different aspect and contradiction within Cuban society under imperialist rule. Each, in a different way, emphasizes the power of the Cuban masses and their historical role in overthrowing imperialism in Cuba.
The four vignettes are dialectical, moving from urban to rural, oppressor to oppressed, exploiter to exploited, from ruler to rebel. One could criticize the characters in the film as being flat, with little development or focus on their interiority as characters. This is because I Am Cuba is not interested in the characters as individuals (Soviet filmmakers would consider that bourgeois). Instead, the film approaches them as a part of the collective Cuban people. The characters in the film are archetypes, representations or shorthand for the various strata of revolutionary Cuban society.
The first section examines the wealthy American tourists who exploit the locals and cannibalize Cuban culture for their own gratification and entertainment, and on the exploited workers, such as the sex worker “Betty,” who must sell her body and culture to these inhuman, foreign bourgeois to survive. The second focuses on the struggles of a rural campesino farmer, Pedro, working land he doesn’t own, and the wealthy landlords who exploit him.
These first two stories of the struggling Cuban people—Betty and Pedro—move from urban to rural. The film emphasizes the dialectical and interconnected relationship between the two. Though the lives of the urban poor and rural poor are very different, as are the forms of exploitation they face, the source of their miserable conditions are ultimately the same. The first half of the film explores what in the Marxist analysis are called the objective conditions for revolution—the socioeconomic conditions of a country, i.e. the levels of poverty, exploitation, political stability, police and military repression, etc., that led toward revolution. Put simply, if a country is poor or economically underdeveloped (or, in the case of Cuba, artificially kept in a state of underdevelopment by an imperial superpower), the conditions are ripe for revolution. Objective conditions are not alone sufficient for a revolution to take place however, and are contrasted by subjective conditions—the existence of a revolutionary movement, the strength, power, and presence of this movement, the capability and competency of its leadership. Subjective conditions are, to a degree, determined by the objective conditions, but are the ultimate deciding factor in the success of a revolution. As the first half of I Am Cuba examines the objective conditions in the country at the time of the Cuban Revolution, the second half explores the subjective conditions.
The first two vignettes are bleak, dour, depicting the brutal poverty and exploitation faced by the Cuban people at the hands of the Batista regime. The last two vignettes shift gears. Now that we have seen and understood the objective conditions in Cuba, witnessed the poverty, exploitation, and misery forced upon the Cuban people, we get see how they resist and revolt against these conditions.
The third vignette (in my view, the best one) focuses primarily on a group of university students, in particular a student named Enrique, who are members of the revolutionary underground, and their struggles against the Havana police trying to shut them down. The bulk of the 26th of July Movement was a small rebel army (3000 members at its peak) that waged a guerilla campaign in the rugged Sierra Maestra mountains of the eastern Oriente province. The success of this armed struggle in the highlands was largely dependent on the aid and support of the covert underground in the cities of Cuba, who spied on the government and arranged transports of money and supplies for the army.
The fourth vignette brings us to Oriente, to the heart of the guerilla campaign. Mariano, a subsistence farmer who lives in isolation in the mountains with his wife and children, wants no part in the revolution, even after a guerrilla soldier tries to convince him to join the struggle. The final shot of the film is of Mariano finally joining the rebel army. As he marches with them, the camera tracks along the army and leaves Mariano behind; he becomes indistinguishable among the others. This final shot reinforces the central thesis of I Am Cuba: the people are the protagonists of history. Each and every one of the anonymous rebels in the final shot is another Mariano, another Enrique, another Pedro, another Betty. The film focuses on these individuals as a vehicle for depicting life in pre-revolutionary Cuba, depicting the revolutionary struggle, before re-absorbing these individuals into the great mass of Cuban people.
In addition to the narrative structure of I Am Cuba, the unique and widely praised cinematography (shot by frequent Kalatozov collaborator Sergei Urusevsky) also reinforces and communicates Marxist ideology. The film is of course being shown as a part of the Trylon’s “The Long Take” series, and long takes are what I Am Cuba is known for more than anything else. Kalatozov and Urusevsky’s camera flows and weaves in tandem with the tides of history, moving forward into the future, into revolution, alongside the Cuban people. The lack of cuts, use of wide-angle lenses, and near-constant movement (importantly, the camera almost always moves with the people—it is only still when the people are still) help insert the audience into the lives of the characters, making us feel like participants in the Cuban Revolution alongside Enrique and Mariano, rather than mere observers or voyeurs.
When Fidel Castro was put on trial after the Moncada attack, he gave a speech in defense of his and the 26th of July Movement’s actions that has now become famous. The most famous line from this speech was quoted at the beginning of this essay: “Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me.” At the beginning of the fourth vignette, the Batista regime’s army captures a group of three rebel fighters and asks, “Where is Fidel?” Each fighter responds, “I am Fidel.” To the Batista regime, to the imperialists, Fidel is the figurehead of the Revolution, is the Revolution, but the rebels understand that they are the Revolution. The Cuban Revolution itself is saying “Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me.” Over seventy years later, despite decade upon decade of attacks, condemnation, and attempts at counterrevolution from the forces of American imperialism, the Cuban Revolution has been absolved by history.
¡Hasta la victoria siempre!
Edited by Olga Tchepikova-Treon