Oliver Stone’s Rose-Colored Gaze at Chavez

The trailer to Oliver Stone’s latest film South of the Border starts off showing segments of overly-hyped news shows about Hugo Chavez on CNN and Fox.

Chavez “is more dangerous to the U.S. than Fidel ever was,” a voice on CNN intones. A former Clinton official on the same show says that Chavez is supporting terrorism on a daily basis. “He’s giving Al Qaeda and Hamas an open invitation to come to Caracas,” the former official adds.

“Who is Hugo Chavez? Where did he come from, Stone asks.

“He was literally born in a mud hut and grew up in poverty. This affected his view of Venezuela as well as his life-long mission to transform the country,” the narrator tells us.

Although I haven’t seen the movie yet, the trailer suggests that Stone has portrayed Chavez as South America’s version of Abe Lincoln.

Depending on who you ask, Chavez is either a ruthless strongman who suppresses the press or a social reformer who fights for the rights of the poor.

From Time magazine’s account of the film, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival this week, it’s clear that Stone believes the latter. Time says:

Every step of the way, Stone is by, and on, on the President’s side. He raises no tough issues, some of which are summarized in Amnesty International’s 2009 report on Venezuela: “Attacks on journalists were widespread. Human-rights defenders continued to suffer harassment. Prison conditions provoked hunger strikes in facilities across the country.” Referring to the 2006 election in which Chávez won a third term, Stone tells viewers that “90% of the media was opposed to him,” and yet he prevailed. “There is a lesson to be learned,” Stone says. Yes: support the man in power, or your newspaper, radio station or TV network may be in jeopardy.

The movie isn’t just about Chavez, about half of it documents Stone spending time with other Latin American leaders. Evo Morales, it turns out, is pretty good with a soccer ball.

Stone appears to be anticipating a sour reaction to his film in the U.S. He recently told Reuters that he was prepared for criticism from both sides of the political spectrum for painting such a sympathetic portrait of Chavez.