Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

aristofanis I just saw Comandante on Greek public television, in its entirety and uninterrupted and was immediately drawn to it.Whether one agrees with Cuba's political system or not, is not the issue here. What Oliver Stone has achieved is what no journalist or historian has ever come close to. He brings himself and his crew right up close to the aged leader and confronts him relentlessly with questions from the mundane to the esoteric and from the political to the personal. Ideas about the past and the future, about dreams, art, democracy, colonialism, family, religion, women's rights, education, love etc are all exposed here, bringing out an intimate portrait. The questions are often uncomfortable as when Stone asks Castro about his ex wives in front of his wife, or when his claims about policing in Cuba are denied by one of Stone's crew members. Yet Castro even at this age, is sharp, humorous and poetic in a way that reveals the intellectual behind the politician. It is also a travel documentary of Havana where Fidel Castro is Stone's guide and walks him through the city's monuments and cafés, sits next to him at the back seat of his car, eats and drinks with him and we get a sense that he knows what is happening in Havana's every alley.One thing is for sure: no other country leader would ever allow himself the closeness Castro offers to Stone and expose his feelings and doubts with such spontaneity.Stone turns a formal encounter into a family visit and brings the audience to meet an iconic political figure and spend a couple of intimate hours with him.A work that leaves you thinking for a long while.

alberto_cascante Oliver Stone, probably one of the most relevant filmmakers of the last decades in the United States, has been trying to get the American public –one of the most ignorant and alienated populations among developed countries– into alternative sides of what in the USA has been called the "official story". Comandante is not an exception in that aim, and it may approach the viewers to some topics that big media corporations and the military-industrial complex have been boycotting through the years in order to avoid the public to ask their government about some big questions. Stone's filmography evidences his own interest in the last half of the recent century –the half he was born in and the events, after WW2, that bring the United States to become what we know today–, and the plots that –in his own words– diminished individual freedom and democratic values in "the land of the free and the home of the brave!" Position for which he has often been criticized "for promoting conspiracy theories and alleged historical inaccuracies." This documentary is an important effort, now that Fidel Castro –one of the 10 most influential politicians of the last century– is probably close to the end of his life. Some analysts have said that the 20th Century will have officially ended after Castro's death.

yurgenburgen I got Comandante from a second-hand DVD shop in my town. From the summary on the back of the case it sounds great. I've an interest in the different 'dictators' of the world and the way this film was described made it sound right up my street.How wrong I was. I expected nice long, insightful interviews with Castro. Instead, I got shaky, horribly-edited interviews about nothing of any real interest. We never get any chance to actually see the 'real' Castro through these interviews because Director Oliver Stone seems to have chopped out any good material he may have filmed over the three days they were in Cuba.On top of all that, the concept of presenting the whole thing with the black-and-white "COMANDANTE" opening scene and such, to make the film look sort of like an old Commie propaganda video, just failed abysmally. Comandante was almost like a bad, unamusing parody of Communist propaganda films, with Fidel being like a cartoon version of himself throughout. Just rubbish.

bijou-2 This film is an interesting document only because it provides a glimpse into the leader's more trivial pursuits. ("I've seen TITANIC on video. It needs a big screen" says Castro.) It fails miserably where Oliver Stones asks tough questions yet fails to pursue the partial answers, or at times total avoidance of the question altogether.Some of the issues talked around are surprising (The CIA role in Angola, Cuba's AIDS quarantine camps, the role of Miami exiles, 1980's prison camps for gays) while others are just bizarre (the lack of multiple parties in Cuban elections, his son's US education, Nicaragua and Venezuela).The documentary instead puts us through yet another series of Che Guevara tales told less than honestly by Fidel. The frequent shots of Eva Peron suggest that Fidel Castro's revolution is not a failed relic but rather the dreamy illusions of yet another misguided albeit glamorous femme fatale.