Movies I Watched - April 2026 "Revolution"
All of these were part of the Super Saturday Movie Club, whose monthly theme this time was "Revolution". I unfortunately did not get to watch the third movie, The Battle of Algiers (1966), even though it was part of the reason I wanted this theme in the first place.
Apr 4 - I Am Cuba (1964)
Very much a filmmaker's film, a very "pure" movie so to speak. It is almost entirely focused on the cinematography and the visual - it is not the kind of movie that will make you cry, or relate deeply to anything, or make you care about the Cuban Revolution, but it is still an incredible joy to watch and a tour de force in filmmaking. 8/10.
I am Cuba. There are two paths for people when they are born. The path of slavery - it crushes and decays. And the path of the star - it illuminates but kills. You will choose the star. Your path will be hard, and it will be marked by blood. But in the name of justice wherever a single person goes, thousands more will rise up. And when there are no more people, then the stones will rise up.
Apr 11 - Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Every time I watch a silent movie, I brace myself, getting ready to see it through old eyes, to give it grace in case it looks stupid or feels slow, and almost every single time I find myself thinking I was stupid for doing that. This movie doesn't just "hold up", it is still amazing - the scenes it shoots are full of life, there are so many people on the shots, and the battleship itself is so massive that whenever it moves it remains breath-taking. There is a single moment of colour in the movie and it is so effective that I did not want to use it as the image to illustrate the movie, because I want you to see it for yourself. 9/10.
Apr 25 - The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006)
This is the epitome of the mid-2000's middle-brow dad movie. It is standardly shot, acted, and plotted, with not a hair or breath out of place or aspiring towards experimentality or greatness. It devotes its energy, instead, to investigate the question of whether or not the Irish Free State was socialist (it wasn't) yet it refuses to even bring up the name of the USSR a single time; James Connolly is brought up exactly once in the entire movie, but not his son.
Ultimately, this feels like a movie without much to say beyond a vague jab at the Republicans not fighting for the common man and the Free State being under the crown, and that is true enough, but what else do you have to say? There is no mention of policy aside from the expropriation of land, a process the USSR was actively engaged with at the period, and none of these supposedly politically minded men think of that.
This would be no issue had the movie compensated it through anything else. Had it told an interesting story, provided amazing shots, or had a clear vision of the future it wants to depict, I would not even deign to bring any of this up, yet the movie appears to want to be taken seriously politically; except all it can do is feebly complain. 6/10.
