Screen Scene
SCREEN SCENE
By John Carlos Cantu
I Am Cuba
[1964. Directed by Mikhail Kalatozov. Cast: Luz Maria Collazo, José Gallardo, Raúl García. MosFilms/Milestone Films. Spanish and English with Russian voice-over and English subtitles. 141 mins.]
A Critics worldwide - governmental and otherwise - have had a tremendous difficulty dealing with Mikhail Kalatozov's I Am Cuba through these last thirty years.
Kalatozov's cinematic hymn to the Cuban revolution has been troublesome for its critics precise ty because it does what it should quite so well. Working with writers Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Enrique Pineda Barnet - and master cinematographer, Sergei Urusevsky - Kalatozov crafted a visual tone poem of such consequence with Am Cuba, it was almost immediately shelved with disfavor by the Soviet government and scorned by Fidel Castro in Havana.
Only recovered after the collapse of Russian Communism, Kalatozov's masterwork has been recently released through the assistance of Martin Scorcese and Francis Ford Coppola. Essentially a quartet of stories tied together by the poetry of Cuban resistance, I Am Cuba is more than mere propaganda. It's an attempt to paint the story of social heroism from self-abnegation topoi ticalresclutbn.
As such, its characters are more archetypes than they are individuals. Yevtushenko's and Barnet's screenplay celebrate the personhoods - student, farmer, laborar, factory worker, and intellectual - upon whose support the Cuban revolution rested in 1959.
This fact alone would have scarcely raised Soviet or Cuban censors' eye-brows. But when they got a good look at the film's fluid cinematography - a remarkably vivid tum on Dziga-Vertov's artful véritó - it was over for Kalatozov's project To add a finishing touch, the film's mesmerizing blend of folk music, jazz, calypso, and martial arts also proved far too potent an aesthetic for militant socialism to license indiscriminatety.
After all, the stirring sight of men and women fighting for their freedom against overwhelming dictatorial odds can have consequences for any government. No self-appointed protector of public mores would ever lose sight of this significant truth. It 's therefore more a wonder that the film's negativas weren't immediately burnt.
By contrast, latter-day American film critics have derided l Am Cuba 's intent It was, admittedly, crafted with a specific political slant in mind. So it must therefore also be acknowledged that Kalatozov's take on colonialism is manifestly one-sided. But one need not thoroughly understand materialist dialectics to grasp the concept of hegemony.
I Am Cuba is clearly the product of the two societies that created it. It's view of politics is no better, and certainly no worse, than any other such propagandized work of art Despite rts ideology - despite, even, its single-mindedness - I Am Cuba falls favorably in that same controversial lot of stalwart fictional political films as Birth of a Nation, The Battleship Potemkin, The Battle of Algiers and Z.
Kalatozov's doggedly sincere Cuba sighs with an ache that soars straight to the human heart despite the occasional superfluity of its surprisingly mundane narrative. But when the shouting is over, I Am Cuba steadfastly reinforces the indisputable fact that film is far too discriminating a social medium to bend unthinkingly to simpleminded polemical panegyrics.
EMMA
[1996. Directed by Douglas McGrath. Cast: Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeremy Northam, Toni Collette. Miramax Films. 111 mins.]
CLUELESS
[1995. Directed by Amy Heckerling. Cast: Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Bash, Britanny Murphy. Paramount Pictures Paramount Home Video. 97 mins.]
Perhaps it's too much to expect films to grow up overnight. But after a century, there might be some hope for the movies after all. With a slight nudge from that unlikely 19th century feminist - Jane Austen - two recent translations of her classic Emma illustrate the power of motion pictures to depict and defuse" hackneyed stereotypes.
Blond bombshell have had a lengthy run in Hollywood. From the days of Jean Harlow and Judy Holliday through Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, and Goldie Hawn, the presumption has been that dumb and blond are close enough in alliteration to warrant facile comparison.
Gwyneth Paltrow's and Alicia Silverstone's respective tums as Austen's sweetty self-centered central character of this 1816 masterpiece are decisive transitions from prior depictions of bubbtedheaded btondies. Both of these actresses retain their character's near-innocent narcissism without descending into the cloying stereotypes that have traditionally caricatured feminine wiles.
Douglas McGrath's Emma - the more faithful translation of these two films- may not be the best adaptation of this recent spurt of Austenmania But he does capture what arry average audience might expect of gentrified England. The cadence of nis screenplay has a warm relaxed tone that allows Austen's story to unfold leisurely.
Emma Woodhouse, a matchmaking twenty-something, proves to be as fetching a busybody as her efforts are near-disastrous. Emma comes to age as she becomes fitfully aware of her remarkable powers of persuasion. As played by Gwyneth Paltrow, Emma hasn't a mean-spirited bone in her body; although admittedly, she can lapse into immaturish spite when thwarted.
Emma's matching of seemingly every eligible local bachelor and maiden causas pandemonium when she seeks to impose her values on friends and family. Granted, this isn't a particularly enlightened perspective to work frora But Austen's - and McGrath's by extension - machinations are far too astute to lapse into parody.
As Paltrow's subtly shaded performance reveals to us over the course of the film, Emma Is Indeed capable of moral growth . And although she is bound to her social class boundaries, she's still intelligent enough to recognize the hurt she's inadvertently fostered through her sometimes misguided efforts.
Alicia Silverstone's Cher Hamilton in Clueless is by pointed contrast resoky post-modernist chic. Amy Heckerling's take on Austen is far too interested in poking fun at the image of the golden girl to take itself seriously . As a result, Silverstone's Cher is also progressive, but only because her growth is purely on her terms.
Cher, like her 19th century Austenian counterpart, is busily matching her friends together, but her standards are informed by 20th century consumer fads. Cleverly winding her way through high school, she's essentially no more than a hipper, shrewder female Ferris Bueller. Using her wits to gain her interest, Cher matures as she belatedly recognizes the consequences of her actions.
Both films use this gosling to swan metamorphosis as the basis of their plot And happily enough, each heroine ultimately wins in both films. Emma through her heart's winsome desire and Cher through her wilfully intelligent lack of remorse.
What Emma and Clueless are archetype shattering models of femininity. By looking back and reconstructing the past, McGrath shows us the brilliance of Austen's social psychology. And if Heckerling is more subversive than McGrath in her analysis of Austen's text she's also crafted the more relentless heroine of the two characters. By looking forward, Heckerling shows us Austen was more than a bit of a modernist.
Working carefully through the conventions from which she wrote, Austen tums out to have anticipated many of the issues women face today. Thus the audacious brilliance of Clueless. Working carefully through the psychology from when she wrote, Austen proves that Emma's problems are most certainly perennial. Happily, so are both of these films Austen inspired.
RATING KEY
Acting
Cinematography
Direction
Editing
Narrative
Sound
Special Effects
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