"To win for the revolution a deep affection that knows no borders, no race, no faith."
01
—
In the spring of April, at the Beijing International Film Festival, I watched the prestigious "I Am Cuba".
The good thing about film festivals is that you can see some old, excellent movies that you can't really remember to see.
"I Am Cuba" is one such movie.
The film was co-produced by the Soviet Union and Cuba in 1962. This year marks the third year of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, which has been 45 years old. It couldn't be more appropriate for Big Brother of the Soviet Union to help Cuba make a film that explains the legitimacy of the revolution to the world.
02
"I Am Cuba" was directed by the famous Soviet director Mikhail Karatozov.
Kasch's collaboration with Sergei Uruszewski's "Flying South" can be called a representative work of the New Wave of Soviet cinema.
From the perspective of film art, "Flying South of the Wild Goose" embodies the perfect combination of the concept of "poetic film" and Uruszewski's "emotional photography", and its exquisite use of light and shadow, smooth lens movement, many of which are a breakthrough in the film expression methods of that era, also seem amazing today.
Many of the works of the fourth and fifth generations of directors in the new era of China are works of effect on "Flying South of the Wild Goose".
Don't say "Geese Fly South", continue to say "I am Cuba".
03
In a sense, the Cuban Revolution was the last successful attempt at the classic "armed seizure of power" in the international communist movement of the 20th century. Since then, although the Cambodian Communist Party has also seized power, the practice of "Democratic Kampuchea" is too short-lived, and it is interrupted by the armed invasion of Vietnam without hesitation; The agrarian revolution and armed struggle led by CPN (Mao) in Nepal, which was very close to a national victory, was ultimately defeated by fear of India's armed intervention.
Because it was the "last waltz", the Cuban revolution was inherently tragic. More importantly, since before this, Khrushchev, the first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, had formally put forward the slogans of "peaceful coexistence, peaceful competition, peaceful transition" and "the whole people's state, the whole people's party", which made the armed struggle also begin to lose its legitimacy within the Soviet and Eastern Blocs - such a big atmosphere of the times could not fail to affect the filming of "I Am Cuba".
Interestingly, almost all of today's articles commenting on "I Am Cuba" focus on the analysis of Karsch's artistic techniques, such as the genius use of "long shots", etc., but the theme of "Defending the Revolution" in "I Am Cuba" is avoided or brushed over, which may be a certain political correctness in the domestic film critics.
04
"I Am Cuba" tells four short stories:
The first story shows the suffering and heartache of Havana.
A young man who sells fruit for a living, sunny and happy, looks forward to the day when he and his beloved girl will have a romantic wedding in the church, the girl is silent, her eyes are melancholy. She is a prostitute who makes a living by going to nightclubs every night for prostitution, and she loves the boy around her but can't tell him the truth.
In the nightclub, a white prostitute who was apparently from the United States got her at a very low price, and in order to keep it as a souvenir, he bought the cross around her neck as a souvenir.
The boy selling the fruit singed and pushed open the door, and he was shocked and heartbroken to see the girl who had not yet put on her clothes and the white prostitute who was leaving, his body frozen, dazed and overwhelmed.
This white prostitute, polite, gentle and courteous, wore an old-fashioned suit. In America, he should belong to the educated middle class, love his family, work hard, and go to church every week. But when he arrived in Cuba, he could have fun and wander.
This is pre-revolutionary Cuba, Cuba under batista's corrupt regime, the back garden and soul-destroying cave of the United States.
The contented American prostitute came out of the girl's dilapidated hut, countless hungry children reached out to him and begged, he raised his hands, awkwardly dodging, and as his vision extended, it was a large area of the slum that was dirty and dilapidated, shocking!
"I am Cuba, I am Cuba, why are you fleeing, you have come to find pleasure, please continue to have fun, is this not a scene of joy?" Don't divert your gaze, look at that, I'm Cuban, I'm Cuban, for you, I'm a casino, I'm a bar, I'm a nightclub, I'm a prostitute, but these young children and old women are outstretched begging hands, and that's me too. ”
05
In the second story, suffering extends from the city to the countryside.
The old man and his son and daughter worked a sugar cane forest, hoping that the harvest would sustain their unsustainable lives.
The harvest really came, and the old man took his son and daughter to harvest happily.
This is a beautiful labor scene like a dance, a knife cuts the root of cane, and then a knife swings away the cane, the crisp sound is as pleasant as music, the old man sweats like rain, his face is full of smiles, he reminds us of Yang Bailao, who carries a two-foot red head rope and looks forward to "rejoicing and celebrating the New Year", and his solo dance in the snow.
The happiness of the poor is always short-lived. The farmer, dressed in a snow-white suit and wearing a Napoleonic hat, accompanied by two armed guards on horseback, took everything he had in the name of the contract: ripe sugar cane, and the log cabin next to the cane field, "these are no longer yours, they have all been sold to the (American) Federal Fruit Company." ”
The camera looks down from behind a white farmer on a horse, with an elderly cane farmer standing on the edge of the foreground along a path, the farmer's vastness and the old cane farmer's small loneliness, and this strong contrast conveys a huge, breathless sense of oppression.
The old man took away his son and daughter with the last peso, and then desperately and frantically set on fire to the sugar cane fields, and also to his own huts.
The flames were raging, majestic and sad, as if the old man's heart was burning. I've never seen such an emotional flame in another movie.
The son and daughter, unaware that disaster had come, frolicked in the center of the town and bought Coca-Cola for the last peso. The United States has squeezed them out economically, but mentally continues to control and dominate them with consumerism and american lifestyles.
"I am Cuba, I am sugar cane, I am the vast expanse of sugarcane that burns with my homeland. I'm Cuban, I love cigars, I love life, I love the people who kiss me every day, I keep burning. I am Cuba, I am music, and a little joy of harvest is worth singing indulgently, but who can hear my sorrow? ”
06
In the third story, the camera turns again to Havana. In the cane farmers, the revolt had begun, but it was still a suicidal revolt, and the enslaved Cuba needed to awaken, so the college students appeared. Lenin's "The State and revolution" appeared in their underground printing house, and in fact, in my opinion, there should be a copy of Mao Zedong's "On New Democracy", and Cuba at this time was in the stage of the new democratic revolution.
The Batista regime used terror to kill revolutionaries, and a college student decided to respond to terror with terror—he intended to assassinate a murderous police chief who didn't blink an eye. He aimed his sniper rifle at the butcher who was eating breakfast on the roof of the building across the road, but after a long ordeal before pulling the trigger, he finally put down the gun, and later told his companions his reasons: "He is with the child, I can't kill him." ”
In this episode, Kashi uses the square gap in the stone railing of the roof to make the camera constantly change angles and directions, showing the young man's inner struggle over and over again through different gaps.
It was such a small fresh revolutionary who finally encountered a butcher during a street protest and was simply shot dead by the latter! Is this a reward for his kindness?
The funeral of the youth turned into a grand parade, and the citizens sprinkled flowers on the balconies to the procession, and the fate of the Batista regime was doomed.
"I am Cuba, I am Cuba, and sometimes for me the sap of the palm tree is filled with blood, and sometimes for me, those whispering voices that surround me are not the waves of the sea, but the tears of spit, who will give the blood answer? Who is responsible for the tears? ”
07
In the fourth story, the camera turns to the mountains on the edge of the guerrilla zone. After enduring, defiant and massacred, the armed struggle began.
The family, living on the top of a hill, a scattered guerrilla called for help from the man, who generously gave him food, but resolutely refused his invitation to join the revolution.
But the Batista regime did not know that he was going to be a law-abiding citizen, and the bombing of modern jet fighter-bombers — which was undoubtedly a gift from the United States — began, and his homeland was razed to the ground. The man dodged and shouted in the bombardment, looking for his lost wife and children in the smoke of the war, and finally found that his most beloved young son was killed.
He found the guerrilla camp and demanded to be given a gun, but was well-meaning ridiculed, "Our guns were taken from the enemy", "Do you think guns will grow out of the field like crops?"
He took part in the battle, he killed a Batista soldier, he captured a rifle, he merged into the grand torrent of revolution.
"I'm Cuba, I'm Cuba, your hands are used to using farm tools, but now a rifle is in your hands, you're shooting the enemy now, you're firing at the past, you're shooting to protect your future."
08
This is the story of "I Am Cuba". It is political, but also artistic, lyrical, behind the breathtaking gaze of the lens language and elegant and noble narration, expressing the dignity and soul of the oppressed, completing the defense of the revolution!
"I am Cuba, I am free, I am immortal!"
09
In fact, revolution does not need a defense, but I use the word "defense" here.
The era of "I Am Cuba" was filmed, the climax of the communist movement in the twentieth century was about to pass, the West was about to usher in a "golden age" of rapid growth after the initial turmoil at the end of World War II, the Soviet Union appeared "three and two complete" revisionism, and China was brewing a final breakthrough...
After the change of offensive and defensive situation, the revolution no longer has self-evident legitimacy, and in the face of an increasingly conservative world and in the face of the strong discourse of the West, the revolution must prove its innocence!
Such an era background determines the extremely stoic, almost muttering style of "I Am Cuba". The film always puts the ordinary, nameless Cuban people in front of the camera, compressing the preset political positions to a minimum. Revolutionaries are weak young people who cannot bear to kill the butcher in front of the butcher's children, peasants whose homes have been destroyed, who have not been mobilized and educated by "party representatives" and "political commissars", and no one has even given them a gun.
More than half a century has passed, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the drastic changes in Eastern Europe, the strategic stalemate after the change of offensive and defensive situations has become a large-scale rout, capital has made a comeback on the wings of neoliberalism, recovering lost ground everywhere, and revolutions have been ridiculed, stigmatized and caricatured everywhere.
Such a situation and pattern, on the contrary, make "I Am Cuba" like a pearl that has been dusted for many years, and it shines again after being wiped away from the dust.
"I Am Cuba" responds to today's accusations against the revolution from the depths of time and space, and thus it also gains a more valuable perspective, earning the revolution a deep affection regardless of borders, races, and beliefs.