SOY CUBA/YA KUBA (I am Cuba, 1964) *** Sweeping, epic propaganda and impressionist historical narrative. The camera work is phenomenal, rolling cameras whacking weeds, exquisite aerial shots, and a lot of faces that tell stories without the filter of words. Proceeds at a leisurely island-pace, or the speed of the early stages of a peasant revolution. Unfortunately it never loses the feel of overt propaganda, and the sense that there's a thicker lens than just the camera. The genuine hardships of the Cuban people, and the frustration and the courage of the revolutionaries, is depicted brilliantly, but 40 years later the viewer knows that prostitution is still a problem of epic proportions on the island and that the place is run by police with different insignias. It's very telling that the peasants articulate their desires as "a school for my children," or "my own land," rather than "an egalitarian agricultural collective" or "a socialist republic where the state owns the means of production." Ultimately it appears that the regular, honest, hard-working folk championed by Mikhail Kalatozov, who was generally disinclined towards propaganda for a Stalinist-era Soviet director, have simple needs and are destined to exploited by whoever promises to change things next. Meet the new boss, marginally better than the old boss. When you see the American businessmen depicted as abusive assholes it's tempting to say "Hey wait, it's just a misunderstanding, we don't like those guys either!" But the reality is that we don't do much about them, and there's no misunderstanding at all.
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