I am the first to admit that conventional understandings of Fidel Castro in the United States are skewed. Popular ideologies demonize his government, and communism in general. I believe that the true story of the Cuban Revolution, including the part where United States and its beloved trade embargo enter the picture and wreak havoc on all levels of Cuban society, should be made available to each and every one of us, along with all of the other parcels of world history that loudmouths in the American media have grossly oversimplified for the sake of a political agenda. Castro is not what he is typically understood to be, and I'm in favor of any film, book, or discourse that seeks to change that fact.
What I'm less fond of is starry-eyed hero-worship masquerading as reportage, especially when it has an obvious political agenda of its own.
"Fidel" is not a great work by any stretch of the imagination, something the objective viewer becomes aware of very quickly. Bravo, for example, spends more time reminiscing over Fidel's attempts to make amends with Khrushchev after the Cuban Missile Crisis than she does covering the Crisis itself. In fact, if one were to chart out the film and graph what kinds of material get X amount of screen time, the movie would reveal its true nature a happy-go-lucky Castro home video, where it is more acceptable to have lengthy sections dealing with the dictator's choice of clothing and his relationship with cigars than it is to discuss the Cuban Diaspora and of any of the numerous other controversies that occurred during Castro's reign; a video where not a word is spoken of Castro's political purges, except to say that there were a couple of trials after the revolution regarding Batista's supporters that were "demonized" by the U.S. media; a home video where nothing is said about the suppression of free speech, public dissent, and religious expression; where the narration briefly mentions the so-called U.S. abduction of thousands of Cuban children without explaining when, why, or most importantly how this took place . . . a video where, best of all, the word "communist" doesn't appear once in all of ninety minutes, except in an oddball moment where Castro describes himself as a "Fidelist," giving me the distinct impression that Bravo is afraid of turning off certain audience members with the use of stigmatic expressions, a somewhat cowardly act that undermines her intended blast against the hegemonic United States of America.
Yet what the film does say is even more offensive than what it avoids. The Cuban exiles in Miami are dismissed in a sentence or two as a bunch of crock-pots who suck it up to the U.S. media and spread lies about Castro because of personal vendettas (true for some of them, perhaps, but certainly not for all.) The movie makes no attempt to explain why they might feel that way, and never returns to them again. Stupider still, when discussing Cuba's involvement with the Angolan Civil War, Bravo makes the vague assertion that Castro's defeat of the South African-backed UNITA led to the collapse of Apartheid. While I'm certainly willing to concede a connection between those two events, I expect a documentary supposedly a product of research and analysis to avoid falling victim to the most common analytical inequity: wedding correlation with causation. Even if we do concede this connection, an important question remains: how much of Apartheid's collapse was Cuba's contribution, and how much resulted from the MPLA at large? Unfounded statements are not acceptable in a documentary, especially when the language of the film makes no attempt whatsoever at disguising them.
Admittedly, "Fidel" is not without a couple of high-points, namely the quality of the footage and Bravo's obvious fluency with editing, yet these strengths serve to make the end product even more excruciating by beating into our heads how great this movie could have been had biases not compromised its integrity. Not to mention the fact that every good shot comes with three or four others ranging from needless to pathetic: Fidel hunting with Khrushchev, Fidel blowing out birthday candles, or (my favorite) Fidel posing and smiling with Hollywood stars, a sequence that was doubtless included in the hopes of stoking American sentiment.
And how about the fact that only five or six people are interviewed in the entire course of the film, and most of their statements are obviously taken out of context? How about the scarcity of Cuban perspective that is, the perspective of Cubans who don't know Castro personally and aren't die-hard fans that runs rampant throughout the entire film? The faults are too numerous to name.
"Fidel" is, in effect, no different from America's politically driven bashing of those who stand in the way of its agenda. It simply hails from the opposite end of the spectrum: the glowing "I love you," versus the Anglican damnation. A sad, sad excuse for a movie.
P.S. To the reviewer who said that leftists will probably love this film, I'm as left as they come, and I agree with you: it's garbage.
7 out of 12 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink