Cuba’s autocratic politics

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Either way, letting more Cubans visit developed economies

like the U.S. and Europe, and putting them in contact for the

first time with free-market ideas and investment they can

take back to the island, could help further Cuba’s so far

tentative capitalist reforms and even lead to more

democratization when Raúl, 81, and Fidel, 86, are gone. The

travel reform in that sense is typical of Raúl’s larger bet:

that economic liberalization will save and strengthen Cuba’s

threadbare finances without threatening the regime’s grip on

Cuba’s autocratic politics.

But while that calculation worked for communist China, it’s

a bigger gamble in Cuba, where communism’s viability is much

more dependent on the personality cult of the Castros. Which

is why it’s ultimately more in the interests of U.S. Cuba

policy to drop the embargo and the constitutionally

questionable travel ban, laws that even most Cuban-Americans

now agree are relics that need to go. For one thing, those

measures have failed, utterly, to dislodge the Castros. As a

result, engaging Cuba economically—more important, engaging

the 12 million hapless Cubans who after half a century are

still paying for cold-war clashes like the Bay of Pigs and

the missile crisis—could help lay stronger groundwork for

democratization when old age finally accomplishes what U.S.

sanctions couldn’t.

Then again, if this is a season of 50th anniversaries, it’s

also a U.S. election season—a reminder that Washington is

still terrified of conservative Cuban-American voters in the

swing state of Florida. A reminder that Havana still hasn’t

grown beyond its anti-yanqui dogma and paranoia. A reminder

that both the U.S. and Cuba are still frozen in 1962, to the

detriment of the Americas.


alter arbitrarily, for story convenience

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Allegiances, political and otherwise, alter arbitrarily, for story convenience. Some episodes are utility pieces, not germane; impure melodrama obtrudes. After a while, we find ourselves watching just for the sake of watching, to see these actors--Elio Germano and Riccardo Scamarcio, volatile and sensitive as Accio and Manrico; Diane Fleri reticently appealing as Francesca; Luca Zingaretti forceful as a fascist leader--and to respond to Luchetti's vitality. This director made me wish I had seen other of his films, though I hope they had better scripts.


Walter Murch, who is a splendid film editor, is also a splendid writer about film editing. (See his book In the Blink of an Eye.) He proves it again in a brief yet memorable article in the Spring 2008 issue of The Threepenny Review, an illumination derived from experience and talent.
Murch's subject has been treated by innumerable writers: the relation between film and dream. His insight is the most interesting that I know. In the early days, he says, the evolution of film grammar, the idea of editing, seemed impossible. "The instantaneous replacement of one moving visual field with another is not part of our daily experience. ... Nothing in four hundred million years of vertebrate evolution prepared us for the visual assault of cinema."

and their final thoughts

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But what would it mean for husbands, sons, and other relations to die many miles away, without the presence of family, with no last words to be heard or physical countenance to be observed, and with no sure knowledge (as was increasingly the case) as to where, when, and under what circumstances death had occurred? The burdens fell first on the soldiers themselves, who needed to prepare as much (if not more) for dying as for killing. And although they turned to the cultural prescriptions of manhood, patriotism, and religion to steer them emotionally, they also had to improvise on the ground so that some semblance of a Good Death might be attained. Many soldiers looked for friends and fighting mates to assume the responsibility for writing to their next of kin, not simply to provide news of death and words of sympathy, but also to include information about the experience of death itself: about their awareness and acceptance, their belief in God and their own salvation, and their final thoughts. More than a few soldiers asked company companions to forward letters that they had already composed in anticipation of their demise.
Improvisation also characterized the response of both the Union and Confederate armies to the tasks of accounting for and then burying their dead. Although some efforts were made early on to establish a set of procedures, for the sake of public health if nothing else, the scale of death and the uncertainties of war quickly rendered them moot. Neither side had regular burial details or grave registration, and until 1864 the Union did not even have a comprehensive ambulance service. When possible, companies and regiments buried their fallen comrades on their own and did their best to enact rituals of respect. But as Faust writes,