Cuba: A look at Stone's Castro

Looking for Fidel is perforce laced with clips of Castro among the masses. Inevitable, too, are the flashbacks to a young Fidel. What a difference 45 years make! The early scenes are full of life, spontaneity and hope; the new ones seem rote, tired and Pavlovian. No doubt, some of the people in the contemporary shots who clamor ''Fidel! Fidel!'' are sincere, but there is no way of knowing. Much of Cuba is a Potemkin village, and that -- more than any U.S. actions -- is the regime's Achilles' heel.

Maybe Stone thinks that he found Castro. It doesn't matter. Had the director not believed in the great revolutionary, Castro would never have granted him 60 on-camera hours. That would have mattered. We would have been deprived of seeing the dictator in his labyrinth and of having a singular document that will be of value to historians long after Castro's passing.

History -- not the one of the Comandante's delusions nor that of Stone's imagination -- will not absolve Castro. Unwittingly, Looking for Fidel doesn't either.