back to an old topic for me

i'm watching Fidel (the Castro Project) and it's astounding to see this particular perspective - most Cuban retrospectives are focused on Martí or Che. it needs a grain of salt - it even says on the Netflix envelope that it's "a somewhat uneven drama" - but after personally studying the revolution length i'm so impressed by the actors' portrayal both physical and emotional of Fidel and Che.

something is burning in my mind: in the movie they show the Cuban governmental offices when they found out about the withdrawl of Russian missiles during the Cuban Missile Crisis - then they turn on an American TV channel for information, aghast that they were left out of negotiations, and the American channel shows army men being kissed by girls in the streets, the 50s extreme optimism, the propaganda that was too young and sincere to be true propaganda. In Cuba, there was a struggle for the new definition of a humanist republic and we instead show human interest, happy people living well. Nothing in our mass media has changed. i won't bore you with that manifesto, though.

my biggest problem in this film is what they choose to gloss over. this movie is three and a half hours long and they boil down che's commitment to the Central American republic - bringing the Revolution to Bolivia and Chile - to one conversation. they cover the second half of Che's life in three scenes. the scene of Che's assination is pretty wrenching.

oh - oh -- it's ending now and it's unrelentingly cheezy. the end of the film: Fidel addresses the camera directly and calls America hypocrites for punishing those that don't follow the United States' rules, after three hours of watching Fidel jail or otherwise punish those that fell out of line of the Revolution. And thank you Netflix - the last ten minutes of the DVD are warped. Shoot. What a weird ending for a good movie. but at the end, here is my overarching statement about this flick: don't watch it unless you already know a lot about the subject matter. if this is all you know about the Cuban revolution, you're being irresponsible.

that being said, it was interesting and i'm very glad i got to see all but the last ten minutes of it... good acting, good music, questionable storytelling.