Thoughts on I Am Cuba

I Am Cuba

Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba, is a powerfully crafted narrative. The opening shot is a bird’s eye view of the ocean and pans towards the island while capturing the lush palm trees. The vast ocean is captured smashing up against the rocks on the shores. The camera stops on a white statue and the voice over commences giving rise to Christopher Columbus’ discovery of the Island, and the camera continuously goes through the city and up a sky rise where it stops and shifts to a close up of musicians atop a roof, capturing their performance, guitarist jumping up, a saxophonist dancing, and another guitarist jumps up. The camera pans over to a man holding a camera filming a group of women playing cards giving rise to self reflexivity, and panning over to an attractive woman disrobing while exposing her two piece bikini as she turns, goes into the pool, and begins to swim. The camera tracks the woman from when she was sitting on the lounge chair near the pool to when she gets up, disrobes, and steps into the pool to swim. The camera also goes into the water and captures the tourists swimming in the water as if to take the audience in for a swim.

The film cuts to a club sequence where there is a medium close up of a man performing a song while the camera captures his performance in a Dutch angle which foreshadows chaos or the psychological instability of the unbalanced characters as it tracks him through the club. The performers are wearing suits with a white mask attached to the backs of their coats with a sad expression on the masks. During the club sequence, the three Americans are depicted as chauvinists, savages, lusting animals that disrespect Cuba and her people.

The American wearing the sunglasses has a distorted view of the Cuban people as he draws exaggerated caricatures of the women that sit next to them. The bearded American is looking for a piece of Cuba that he can identify with.  The lighting and the use of shadows gives rise to contrast as well as increases the dramatic effect of the setting; especially, with the African totems dressing the set of the club sequence. The club sequence intercuts with a sequence in the street with the fruit vendor and Maria. The fruit vendor is depicted as a happy optimist that fronts his fruit cart for the revolution as he hides and passes notes to the rebellion. The vendor sings in the streets about the fruits he is selling while telling his companion Maria his dreams of marrying her, and how happy he will make her. The scene ends and cuts back to the club where Maria is wearing a black outfit adorned with a crucifix around her neck. Maria is asked to sit with the Americans, and the man wearing sunglasses draws a caricature of her face while assuring his friend the bearded American that she holds that identifiable piece that he was missing; the crucifix.

In the club Maria is known as Betty, she gets tossed around by the Americans from one to the other while the spectators laugh and cry out with their euphoric mind set, and Betty hears the beat, the beat of the drum, and she begins dancing around the African totem in a native dance, but is force to stop when the tossing around commences again. The bearded American wants to see her world, to understand her culture; he wants to see where and how she lives, so he takes a cab and escorts her home. Betty lives in a shack outside of town in a poor village. The camera is positioned in a Dutch angle as the background gives rise to German Expressionism by way of the design of the set. There is a large crucifix hanging from the head post of the metal frame while the frame looked very unbalanced. Maria takes the covers off of the bed and unfastens her crucifix, throwing it to a nearby chair. The man insists on buying her crucifix, but she looks at him in dismay. Maria sleeps with the bearded American, and in the morning he counts the money is going to pay her, when the fruit vendor opens the door abruptly, and sees the American with the money and Maria lying in bed with white sheets covering her naked body. The American exits, and the vendor looks at her in disgust.

Maria is, in a sense, a representation of Cuba while the Americans are a metaphor to the people and politicians that rape or whore Cuba for their own benefits. This is all depicted in the club sequence leading to Maria’s house and village. The Americans are staying in the posh hotel buildings of Cuba, and not in the poor village. The children are starving and begging for money while the women observe the displaced American man acting frantically as the children and people approach him.

For example, during the club sequence the American wearing the sunglasses states: “there is nothing decent about Cuba.” When he was making comments about the women and the performers, but when the Cuban performers were wearing ceremonial tribal costumes the same man states: “Now we are going to see something.” The man’s sunglasses are an allusion to the distorted view Americans have on Cuba. The man never takes them off throughout the sequence.

In the sequence with Pedro the sugar cane farmer, the narrative was very clear and linear with a montage of the exposition between Pedro buying a house, getting married, starting a family, and managing his crops. Pedro prays to Cuba to give him a healthy field of sugar cane, so that he can take care of his family, and the land provides for them, but Mr. Acosta informs Pedro that he sold the land to the United Fruit Company and that they no longer have a home, nor land to work. Pedro sends his children to the city while he burns his cash crop and home. There are a total of four sequences. Another sequence describes the suppression of students and dissenters at Havana University, and the final sequence shows how government bombing of mountain fields induced farmers to join with the rebels in the Sierra Maestro mountains. The final scene is a triumphal march into Havana to proclaim the revolution.

The film has a lot of Social Realism elements embedded within the film. There is a sequence were the Cubans rally together on top of steps and protest the government’s injustices  towards its people, like Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potempkin, the steps of Odessa. The film itself tries to play off a documentary feel as if to depict the heroism of Fidel Castro’s revolution to claim Cuba in the name of the people, but the outcome was not so noble. Kalatozov’s uses four stories and interweaves them from beginning to end to add to the embedded Social Realist theme of uniting the Cuban people to ‘stand up for what is right’ (socialism) throughout the film.

Finally, I feel that the camera work by A. Calzatti and B. Brozhovsky, gave the spectators a glimpse into the lives of the Cuban worker (Fruit Vendor), the prostitute (Maria), the farmer (Pedro), the student (Enrique), the revolutionary (Mariano). Each of the stories were strong enough to stand on their own, but keeping the connection, one can see the effectiveness of the continuity editing, the avant garde camera angles and panning, the montage, and the strong story-telling that made this film a powerful narrative.

Yes, the film has huge propaganda qualities to show the heroism and risks that Fidel Casto took to overtake Cuba with socialist ideologies, but the film at times did not feel as blatant as the other Russian films such as Circus or Ballad of a Soldier, and the film captures a longing for freedom amongst the people of Cuba. The film stands alone, and can be studied for its technical genius and structure. The film was produced in the 1964, but the techniques that were utilized were very advanced. The film was ahead of its time and so was Kalatozov. I will leave you with this stunning quote from the poet Yevgeni Yevtushenko, sums up the film’s provocative nature:

"Don't avert your eyes. Look! I am Cuba. For you, I am the casino, the bar, hotels and brothels. But the hands of these children and old people are also me"

-- Yevgeni Yevtushenko

Thoughts on 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days

Four Months, Three Weeks, and Two Days till the Birth of Death

Although abortion is a taboo topic in many nations as well as it is illegal in others; the controversial subject is very real, and to capture it on film would adhere to Bazin’s ontological theories. Ontology is the study of the nature of being, and according to Bazin the art of cinema is through reality. Bazin outlined the ontological foundations of the art of cinema in his magazine the Cahiers du Cinema (Cinema Notebooks). Cristian Mungiu creates a world in which the audience is quickly engaged and immersed in the lives of Gabita and Otilia, and Mungiu adheres to Bazin’s ontological theories through his long takes, the capture of impoverished characters, deep focus, and minimalistic cuts; to capture the space and the illusion of real time. In Ladri di Biciclette and Umberto D by Vittorio De Sica, two very powerful neo-realistic films and tearjerkers about the poverty in Italy, after World War II. De Sica’s characters are very heart felt and honest while the people around them push the characters to the very edge of sanity and judgment of values, but as sad and as powerful as these films are; they are not tragic unlike the film by Mungiu. Mungui uses the classic theories of Bazin as well as inspired shots of De Sica, to captivate and capture a very powerful subject matter, and the emotional rollercoaster of the decision to abort the birth of a child; due, to an unwanted pregnancy.

In Four Months, Three Weeks, and Two Days by Cristian Mungiu, fulfills Bazin’s theory of “Cinema pur (pure cinema),” because the issues of an unplanned pregnancy and then the decision of abortion with a back alley logic; is not only powerful, but utterly disturbing. The subject matter and the lives of the characters create a spectacle of epic proportion. Mungiu’s technique of hand held camera use is extraordinary because of his long unflinching takes and slow paced tracking to capture every minor as well as major detail, but Mungiu uses limited cutting to capture the sense of time. He also uses the close up to maximize the focus of certain objects. For example, in Four Months, Three Weeks, and Two Days, Otilia opens Mr. Bebe’s suitcase and the camera is zoomed in on the instruments in the case, and she pulls out a switchblade; popping out the blade, she tries to push it back in, and she takes it because Mr. Bebe has returned from the restroom. In that scene one begins to wonder what kind of doctor, Mr. Bebe is, if he is a doctor at all or just a street thug.

The decision made by an impoverished female scholar to abort her child, and even though, the tragic death of an unwanted child is documented within the narrative; the camera seems like it is breathing and alive because it is handheld. The audience feels like they are traveling with the characters or like hidden voyeurs trapped in the room with Otilia and Gabita with the time that is set and even though, the camera’s wide angle lens picks up the entire space of the dorm or space of the room; one gets a sense of claustrophobia. In the following passage Bazin discusses how the camera is a nonliving agent that is used only to capture and reproduce the moment in time and space:

“For the first time, between the originating object and its reproduction there intervenes only the instrumentality of a nonliving agent. For the first time, the image of the world is formed automatically, without the creative intervention of man…All the arts are based on the presence of man, only photography derives an advantage from his absence. Photography affects us like a phenomenon in nature, like a flower or a snowflake whose vegetable or earthly origins are an inseparable part of their beauty (What is Cinema?, p. 13).”

Bazin seems to be rationalizing the use of technology to capture reality on film in the above passage. Although Bazin struggles with the idea of technology and its advancements; he will never truly know how his theories on pure cinema and ontology have evolved as well as the advancement of technology to capture the aesthetic value of contemporary neo-realism. Technology strives for advancement to capture the description of reality through binary information like the media of High Definition and Digital stream, for example. Film is very honest, since the technique of its reproduction and replication was analogue, but technology has advanced into a realm of digital. The true performance that used to be recorded is now a clear description, and not of the actual, but this does not hinder or take away from the production of Mungiu’s film, rather, it has in some way enhanced the quality of the film while maintaining the integrity of Bazin’s vision of naturalism and neo-realism.

Mungiu’s film is very honest in the way he uses the classical theories of neo-realism and how he uses modern instruments to film its contemporary evolution. In the following passage by Bazin, he explains the validity and credibility of the photograph, and how the art of photography: “The objective nature of photography confers on it a quality of credibility absent from all other picture-making…We are forced to accept as real the existence of the object reproduced, actually represented, set before us that is to say, in time and space. Photography enjoys a certain advantage in virtue of this transference of reality from the thing to its reproduction” (What is Cinema?, p. 13). Bazin almost feels cheated if not for the evidence of photography; since it gives him a sense of verisimilitude. Bazin seems to be in search of honesty and truth with what he digests visually as well as the oratorical within the narrative of a film. Bazin wants to relive the moments with the characters with the setting and stage of reality. In Four Months, Three Weeks, and Two Days, the space feels tight and smothering. A lot of natural depth of field and deep focus is captured with the bird’s eye of the street; capturing, Otilia as she runs towards the train station, or the medium close up of Otilia and her boyfriend Ardi sitting on a window sill of a hallway while other college students walking up the flight of stairs fill the space of the background, and since the camera is capturing both of the main characters, the banister of the stairs in the background, and the depth of the hallway; the audience gets a sense of the size of the space. The scene is very small and yet very important because Otilia needs to borrow money from Ardi (her boyfriend), and at the same time Ardi needs Otilia to return the favor by picking up flowers for his mother since it is her birthday. The scene prepares the audience for the locations of her Otilia’s journey and more of the character’s personality traits are exposed.

The main characters of the film are very poor, hustling for a pack of smokes and borrowing money while living in a dorm at a college in post communist Romania. Bazin discusses the validity of communism in The Bicycle Thief in this following passage: “Its social message is not detached, it remains immanent in the event, but it is so clear that nobody can overlook it, still less take exception to it, since it never made explicitly a message” (What is Cinema? Vol. II, p. 51). Bazin explains how De Sica has captured the impoverish nation of Italy after World War II through the scenery of the streets and the workmen, and how they go about their lives to survive. Mungiu’s vision of post communist Romania is using the same principles as De Sica and as Bazin explained in his guidelines for ontology in cinema. Otilia and Gabita trade household goods like Nescafe for cigarettes or give their neighbors powdered milk to feed some cats; these characters are poor but they are also surviving, and they borrow money and repay it with the money they earn from grants. In the following passage, Andrew explains how camera is merely an instrument to record the events and the use of technology to create art as the audience perceives it to be:  “We view cinema as we view reality but not because of the way it looks (it may look unreal) but because it was recorded mechanically. This inhuman portrait of the world intrigues us and makes of cinema and photography not the media of man but the media of nature” (Andrew, p.138). The media of nature is nothing more than a tool to capture it in time and space, but of only that moment that is trapped on the celluloid. The aesthetics of reality are captured and then played back so that others may indulge in that experience, but film is limited to the time that it has been used to record; sure, one can replay the event over and over again to relive that moment, but then reality loses its meaning every time the image and/or moment is played back. In the following passage by Andrew, he discusses how the audience perceives and intake the feelings of cinema: “With cinema, then, we are struck by two kinds of realistic feelings. First, cinema records the space of objects and between objects. Second, it does so automatically, that is, inhumanly” (Andrew, p.139). In the above passage Andrew clearly conveys the perception of realism in cinema. The brain reacts to the objects and images and places the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle into place to create meaning and understanding. No stone is left unturned; especially with the Mungiu’s film. The slow pace and long takes feed the the mind of the audience as well as fulfills the Bazin’s theories of his ontological guidelines. The time of the moment is not as natural or as spontaneous as the first time one immerses oneself in that captured moment of time and space, but rather fooling oneself for the sake of the illusion of self gratification and immersion of a false sense of reality. What is captured is pure for that moment, but the purity is lost the spectator who returns to the same reproduction of the same moment. That is the beauty of neo-realistic cinema. Before one sees the film a moment of anticipation and wonder arises, even during the spectacle of watching the film, but after the same feeling and sense of surprise is gone, but not of the experience.

That is why I disagree to a certain extent with what Andre Bazin on his arguments of realism, surrealism, and the use of montage, but I can grasp what he is trying to show with his arguments as well as an appreciation for what he has written. There are aesthetic values in his clarity and visions of ontology in cinema. One can only wonder what he would think if he were alive to see the genius of contemporary neo-realism such as the work of Four Months, Three Weeks, and Two Days by Cristian Mungiu.

Works Cited

Bazin, Andre. “The Ontology of the Photographic Image” and “The Evolution of the Language

Of Cinema,” Film Theory and Criticism. Ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. Oxford:

Oxford UP, 2004.

Bazin, Andre. “Bicycle Thief,” What is Cinema? Vol. II. Trans Hugh Gray. Berkely: UC Press,

1971.

Bazin, Andre. “Umberto D,” What is Cinema? Vol. II. Trans Hugh Gray. Berkely: UC Press,

1971.

Andrew, J. Dudley. The Major Film Theories. New York:

Oxford University Press. 1976.

Thoughts on Eraserhead

In Heaven…

Although Eraserhead by David Lynch, is a horrific tale of coming to terms with fatherhood, and loneliness with themes of: family, premarital sex, wedlock, infidelity, abortion, child birth, and murder; Erasehead has chauvinistic undertones, values the blue collar worker, and the oneiric landscapes inside Henry’s apartment mystifies and capture the viewer’s attention that pulls them into the narrative as well as focuses on the imagery. Lynch’s interpretation of the oneiric experience is almost that of lucidity, since the main character (Henry) has his eyes wide open when he sleeps while Mary X (Henry’s girlfriend) sleeps with her eyes closed. Henry is in search with a spiritual meaning and purpose to (and for) his life while living in a post apocalyptic universe known as Philadelphia. The hero’s journey begins with the spiritual, like that of King Arthur’s quest for the Holy Grail (A very twisted version, but spiritual none-the-less). The desire for spirituality is vividly expressed by Henry’s escape to the woman in the radiator; during his daydreams. David Lynch’s uses Film as an instrument to capture his world of surrealistic expression.

In Eraserhead, Lynch’s portrayal of Mary X is that of a weak, timid, seductive, controlling, baby producing trapper; that ruins Henry Spencer’s life. He is a blue collar worker for a printing company, and he was on vacation. A vacation that was cut short when Henry found out that his girlfriend Mary X had an abnormal premature mutation. A mutation named Junior. Henry had to get married and help rear the little mutated child.  Mary, afraid of her mother as well as motherhood, looks down and crosses her arms when she is around her mother. Mary, when confronted with becoming a mother, leaves in desperation back to her parents, and leaving Henry and the child to fend for themselves. A contradiction to Mary’s values occurs; even though, she wants to get away and seems to be happy living with Henry, she returns to the place that she wants to escape from. Her actions paint a picture of immaturity as well as the contradiction.

When the audience is introduced to Mary; she sits anxiously looking out of her post apocalyptic home in an industrial area of Philadelphia. The house is in a desolate part of the industrial town, and Mary sits on the window sill spying out the window. Henry pulls a note out of his pocket while Mary stares out into the darkness from the window. Mary X tells Henry that he is late and Henry retorts “I made it, didn’t I?” Mary introduces Henry to her mother and the mother begins to ask him questions about what type of work he does and what is he doing at the moment while Mary who is very timid at that moment; begins to have an epileptic seizure.

In Eraserhead, Lynch manipulates time and space. In the beginning of the film, a black planet with a man sitting by a broken glass window mans the levers which suck up a fetal looking object from Henry’s mind and into a pool on the planet while lying down with his eyes open. Henry (the main character of the film) wears a suit with a pocket protector filled with pens walks through an Industrial part of Philadelphia holding a paper bag filled with groceries. Henry checks his mail box for any correspondence; notices nothing, and walks to his room. An attractive woman across from Henry tells him that a girl named Mary had called, and that Mary needed too get a hold of him. Henry thanks her, and enters his apartment. Henry places his groceries on top of a sideboard, and turns on some music on his record player. Taking off his socks and placing them on the radiator, he stares at the floor looking at the textured shag under the radiator. In the following passage by the French Surrealist Group discusses how the subconscious mind perceives the contradictions of reality and how it manipulates to rationalize the meaning in the world of the absurd:“Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past, and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, cease to be perceived as contradictions” (Second Manifesto of Surrealism, pp. 123-4). This is true; especially, in Eraserhead.  David Lynch manipulates the phobia of fatherhood with black humor. For example, in Eraserhead, there is a scene where the mutated premature child is crying; Henry inserts a thermometer into the child’s mouth (Seeming to be normal), turns around, and the child is covered in boils while Henry replies, “I guess you are sick?” The infant became ill after Henry inserts the thermometer. So, Henry sets up a humidifier and an ice pack over the child. Henry invites his female neighbor into his apartment while the baby is there. She asks him where his wife is and then she asks him if it would be alright to stay the night. She does and they have sex in front of the baby.  In the center of the bed they are immersed in milk where they fornicate. These scenes are absurd and can only be rationalized and reasoned in a world that is oneiric. For example, when Henry wakes up to Mary sprouting out fetuses, and Henry while shocked kept pulling out fetuses from between her legs. Henry began to throw the fetuses against the walls, and the fetuses’ head would splatter, or when the Father is introduced and he lets them all know that dinner is ready, and if Henry would do the honors of carving the chicken. Mr. X hands Henry the knife and fork and Henry holds the knife and fork over the chicken; the chicken’s wings and legs begin to move while ooze seeps out between its thighs and Mrs. X begins to salivate and have an orgasm at the table. Mrs. X runs to the kitchen. Henry is ambushed by Mrs. X and is interrogated if he had premarital sex with her daughter. She also begins to kiss Henry on the neck. Henry tells her that, that information is none of her business, but she spits back that Mary just had a premature baby and as soon as they get married they can pick up the child. Henry is shocked and dumfounded. They pick up the child and Henry feels like a complete family, but arriving into his apartment he stares off into the radiator and he sees a stage before snapping out of his daydream, due to the baby’s cries. At night a storm wakes up the baby and he begins to cry, and Mary cannot sleep and she leaves to her mothers. Henry stares at the radiator once more after Mary leaves and the stage returns. An alien like woman with really big cheeks dances on the stage doing a shuffle while fetuses are falling onto the stage. The woman in the radiator then steps on a fetus and does the same to the right of her. When Henry wakes up from his dream Mary begins convulsing in her sleep; only to find Mary giving birth to more of the same mutations.

During the splattering of the premature fetal mutants, the audience is wrenching in disgust and is overwhelmed with sympathy and empathy with Henry. The audience is experiencing synaesthesia; due to the immersion of the narrative. Lynch’s shocking imagery of Henry killing his son with a pair of scissors; throws the audience into the very face of fear. The film expresses an extreme fear of becoming and being a parent through this metaphorical oneiric landscape. In the following passage, Balazs discusses how the imagery is processed through psyche: “We have learnt to integrate single disjointed pictures into a coherent scene, without even becoming conscious of the complicated psychological processes involved. We have also acquired the ability to interpret picture metaphors and picture symbols that convey situations and emotions indirectly” (Balazs, 1952 edition, p. 30-35). The imagery in the scene is very extreme, but the message is very clear. Even though, Henry murders his children; he will find salvation in Heaven.  In Un Chien Andalou (1929) by Luis Bunuel, the opening scene is very extreme and shocking; a woman sits in a barber’s chair only to get her eye sliced open by a straight razor. Bunuel also juxtaposes the images of the eye being sliced with clouds moving through the moon to symbolize the slice. Brunnius explains how film is the perfect medium and how the camera is the perfect instrument to capture the world of dreams, in the following passage: “Contrary to theatre, film, like thought, like the dream, chooses some gestures, defers or enlarges them, eliminates others, travels many hours, centuries, kilometers in a few seconds, speeds up, slows down, stops, goes backwards . It is impossible to imagine a truer mirror of mental performance.” (Brunnius, ‘Crossing the Bridge’, q.v.). Brunnius’s quote captures the elements of cinema can be used as an instrument to manipulate and evoke the subconscious mind. Just like Man Ray would use different techniques to entertain himself while watching a boring film. In the following passage by Paul Hammond, he discusses what Man Ray’s techniques were: “Man Ray used to transform any film that bored him by blinking rapidly, making a grill with his fingers, covering his eyes with a semi-transparent cloth, even wearing a pair of prism spectacles he had made himself’ (Hammond, pg. 10). Man Ray’s techniques are very interesting, and using his theories to increase the interest of the spectator; can be a useful tool when creating a surreal film/art. Lynch uses a similar technique when he cuts his film. Instead of showing the audience a simple cut, a wipe, or a black screen; Lynch uses milk traveling back to the edges of the frame or doors open to introduce the following scene.

The audience is immersed in the narrative as well as the dark aesthetic qualities of his post apocalyptic universe. The woman in the radiator is Henry’s guardian Angel, and after slaughtering the conscious ego of the audience; everyone experiences salvation as well as closure, and the characters (Henry and the woman in the radiator) are bathed in white light as if their sins have been wiped clean because in heaven, everything is fine.

Works Cited

Andrew, J. Dudley. The Major Film Theories. New York:

Oxford University Press. 1976.

Bunuel, Luis. “Cinema, Instrument Poetry,” The Shadow and Its Shadow.

Ed. Paul Hammond. London: British Film Institute, 1978.

Goudal, Jean. “Surrealism and Cinema,” The Shadow and Its Shadow.

Ed. Paul Hammond. London: British Film Institute, 1978.

The French Surrealist Group. “Manifesto of the Surrealist’s Concerning L’Age d’Or,”

The Shadow and Its Shadow. Ed. Paul Hammond. London: British Film Institute, 1978.

Hammond, Paul. “Off at a Tangent,” The Shadow and Its Shadow.

Ed. Paul Hammond. London: British Film Institute, 1978.

Eraserhead. Dir. David K. Lynch. Perf. Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Allen Joseph, and Jeanne

Bates. Absurda. 1977.

Hoffman, Alison. Eisenstein BB and Day Six: Power Point. Beach Board

Accessed on 17 Nov. 2008.