Oliver Stone’s According to the The AP’s Moore says “Looking for Fidel” is “a much more balanced portrait” though “hampered by Stone told Mitchell that this time he did his homework. He noted, however, that he did not For more background have a look at What struck me then as most revealing was 1) what Banks had to say about the cohering Oliver Stone’s “Looking for Fidel,” to premiere Wednesday on HBO, is called the follow-up in tough mode to “Commandante,” his previous softball portrait of the Cuban leader. This time, instead of tossing bouqets at Castro in a loving (some said fawning) approach to El Commandante, Stone reportedly confronts him about his vicious crackdown on political […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-617","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-9X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWednesday on HBO, is called the follow-up in tough mode to “Commandante,” his previous
\nsoftball portrait of the Cuban leader. This time, instead of tossing bouqets at Castro in a loving
\n(some said fawning) approach to El Commandante, Stone reportedly confronts him about his
\nvicious crackdown on political dissidents and the shocking execution of three Cuban ferry
\nhijackers who were barely out of their teens.<\/P>
\n
\ninterviewed key players besides Castro, including “prisoners accused of hijacking, leading
\ndissidents, wives of prisoners and human rights advocates. … In one extraordinary roundtable,
\nStone brings together Castro, several accused hijackers, prosecutors and defense attorneys …”
\nThat ought to be interesting. Even Cubans who idolized Castro were thunderstruck by the three
\nexecutions and reportedly felt they were the ultimate, unconscionable betrayal of the
\nCuban revolution.<\/P>
\n
\nwrites<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> that HBO viewers “were spared ‘Comandante’ when the
\nnetwork yanked it before its scheduled airdate a year ago.” That film “was undone last spring”
\nbecause of the crackdown and executions. “No less a defect,” Frazier adds, “‘Comandante'” was a
\nbarely coherent vanity production placing the filmmaker at its core while dabbling with the
\nquestion: Who’s that old fellow with the beard beside Oliver Stone?” <\/P>
\n
\nstylishly fidgety camera work and choppy editing.”
\nTimes, who has also seen both films, writes that “Fidel” is “much grimmer” than
\n“Commandante” and is “charged with intensity.” <\/P>
\n
\nintend the follow-up “to be a document, like an Amnesty International inquiry into each and every
\nprisoner. But,” Stone said, “I did film the dissidents, to hear what they had to say. ‘Fidel’ is more
\nnarrow in focus; I tried to get him angry this time.” And was he successful in provoking El
\nCommandante? “Yes,” Stone said, “he was defensive.” In the first film, the director also concedes:
\n“Perhaps I was pandering, perhaps I was softballing him with the questions, as some people
\nsay.”<\/P>
\n
\nabout a panel discussion by novelists Russell Banks and William Kennedy, who had recently spent
\ntime with Castro; New Yorker writer John Lee Anderson, who lived in Havana for a year;
\nCuban-American novelist Achy Obejas; Norman Pearlstein, editor-in-chief of Time Inc.; Terry
\nMcCoy, editor of
\nthe Verge: An Island in Transition,”<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> and others with a longtime
\ninterest in Cuba.<\/P>
\n
\nforce of Cuba’s national mythology, comparing its strength to Israel’s and that of the United
\nStates, and 2) Obejas’s conclusion that, regardless of whether or when Castro goes or who
\nreplaces him, the greatest influence on daily life in Cuba will depend on American politics more
\nthan its own.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"