I Am Cuba

Amazon.com has now shipped three of Milestone's I am Cuba Ultimate Edition to me and they have all arrived defective. The first set arrived with a damaged disc three. The second with damaged discs two and three. The third with damaged discs one and two. I shouldn't have sent the first set back because I actually could have cobbled together a working set from all three.

The problem is one that happens far too often with DVD's. The discs are falling off the spindles and are getting scratched as a result. I would put Milestone's I am Cuba packaging up there with the awful fold out Buffy and Angel Fox sets which, since they had spindles which didn't require you to "press here" to release the disc, usually arrived with several discs scratched. I finally had to give up on one of the seasons of Angel for this reason. As for I am Cuba I have to give up on it since Amazon won't send me another. You would think that by now companies could make a product which didn't result in this problem. I know, I am dreaming...

Because of this problem I would recommend against buying this product until Milestone fixes it. I know snowball's chance in hell...All of this is unfortunate because I am Cuba is a brilliant film and along with Cranes Are Flying prefigures much of the French nouvelle vague.

Finally, I have contacted Milestone three times about this problem now--so much for Mr. Doros claim that the company hasn't been contacted directly about this problem. I haven't heard a word from them...

One critic once wrote of the 1957 film version of "Peyton Place" that it was "half masterpiece and half junk". The same can almost be said for I Am Cuba. Long admired by filmmakers such as Scorcese and Coppola, this film to some represents the low-point of Soviet cinema -i.e., anything post-Eisenstein and pre-Tarkovsky- and to others it is a wonderful -if melodramatic- exercise in the technique of "pure cinema": sweeping hand-held camera, ultra-long takes (surely influential on the work of Bela Tarr) and knife-edge chariscouro imagery.

While overtly propagandistic, showing the suffering of decent Cubans at the hands of mainly American "imperialists", the film's technique is dazzling, with brilliantly expressive camerawork and strong performances from all involved. Although the dubbing -there is both Russian and Spanish in there- can be irritating, the story is so effectively visually as to overcome these deficencies. Highly recommended for any fan of how to tell a story with the maximum of show and style.

This film is stunning and mesmerizing,definitely worth seeing.
However, its message is definitely pro-Fidel, pro-revolution, pro-Cuba as a romantic, idyllic, desirable, utopic mecca of ideals. If one can keep in check the political perspective/vantage point of the filmmaker, and not get carried away with fantasies that would lead one away from the reality of the horror/lack of freedom of expression/oppression/ incarceration of dissidents whose "crime" is setting up free access libraries, (these are just a sampling of the horrors...)/that has existed and progressively worsened since January 1959, then one can objectively say that this movie is art, and as art it is provocative and beautiful.