Rent I Am Cuba (1964)

A Fever Dream with a Fearless Camera - I Am Cuba review by griggs

After The Cranes Are Flying, I figured I had Mikhail Kalatozov sussed: big emotion, big technique, and a taste for making the camera do things it probably shouldn’t. Then Soy Cuba comes along and basically dares you to keep up. It’s my second Kalatozov, and it’s nothing like the first — more fever dream than drama, part propaganda, part poetry, all heat and momentum.

The cinematography is the main reason to show up, and Sergey Urusevsky deserves the loudest applause. The camera glides, dives, floats, and slips through crowds like it knows exactly where you should be looking. It is showing off, but it’s also pulling your eye and building momentum: you feel the sweat, the crush of bodies, the sudden violence, the way a street can flip mood in seconds. It’s hard not to grin at the sheer nerve of it.

It’s not subtle, and it doesn’t pretend to be. The politics are painted in thick strokes, sometimes blunt, but the images are so alive they keep complicating what you’re being told. Very different to The Cranes Are Flying, but it’s made me want to seek out more Kalatozov straight away.