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Fidel

2002, Movie, NR, 91 mins

Fidel: Review

FIDEL | FIDEL--THE UNTOLD STORY
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American filmmaker Estela Bravo's documentary portrait of Fidel Castro is unabashedly adoring hagiography, a positive take on the long-time Cuban president of a kind that's rarely seen in the United States. Bravo opens with a celebration welcoming Castro to New York City's Harlem, and the adulatory mood never flags, even after Bravo switches to the standard biography format. After a brief treatment of Castro's childhood as the son of a well-to-do sugar-cane planter, his early education (Bravo interviews a number of teachers from Castro's Jesuit high school) and days as a radical nationalist at the University of Havana, Bravo charts Castro's long battle against the dictatorial Batista regime: His parliamentary run, squelched by Batista's 1952 coup d'etat; the July 26, 1953, assault on the army barracks in Moncada, which resulted in Castro's two-year imprisonment; the two-year guerilla war Castro fought from the mountains of Cuba and Batista's ultimate defeat on New Year's Day, 1959. Once Castro became leader of the Cuban people, he seized privately owned lands and instituted the Agrarian Reform Act, then earned the undying enmity of the United States by nationalizing U.S.-owned properties. The Eisenhower administration responded with covert attempts to overthrow his regime, and as Castro cuddled ever closer with Khrushchev, slapped a stern — and ongoing — embargo on all trade and investment between Cuba and the United States. In 1961, Kennedy authorized the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion; in 1962, Kennedy and Khrushchev nearly came to nuclear blows when Castro agreed to allowed Soviet missiles on Cuban soil. Bravo then details Castro's considerable influence on emerging third world nations — Angela Davis understandably marvels at how one man from such a small country could help shape the destinies of millions of people around the globe — Cuba's involvement in Angola and the crisis that gripped Cuba after the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. Throughout, the U.S. plays the heavy and the notion of criticizing Castro is never broached; the only accusation leveled against him is Alice Walker's assertion that he can't sing. Bravo makes a strong case in favor of lifting the 40-year embargo, which has only become stricter over time, and her film is really no more biased than most right-leaning treatments of Castro's career. But the lack of opposing viewpoints soon grows tiresome — the film feels more like a series of toasts at a testimonial dinner than a documentary. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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