A Comprehensive Portrait of Cuba, Castro

In summer, movies get sillier and TV gets more serious. Movie studios aim their big pyrotechnical blockbusters at kids who are out of school. Network executives, meanwhile, manage to find time on the schedule for documentaries they probably wouldn’t have shown during the regular prime-time season, when millions more are watching and much more money is at stake.

We should probably be grateful networks continue to do documentaries at all, especially considering the popularity (and profitability) of multistory magazine shows in recent years. Tonight, “CBS Reports: The Last Revolutionary” offers an hourlong portrait of Fidel Castro that is comprehensive, shaded and satisfying in ways a short segment on a magazine show could never be.

Dan Rather, the great American anchorman, got back into his safari duds to travel to Cuba and interview the dictator who has managed to remain a thorn in the side of the United States for more than three decades. As he has in past interviews, Castro comes off not as despotic or ruthless but as wily, shrewd and even charming. He is almost 70, but acts 60.

Rather and the crew got “unprecedented access to Cuba and to Castro,” Rather says in his introduction. The encounter with Castro occurred in May, after Cuba had shot down an unarmed civilian plane over international waters, but Castro’s comments on that incident were already used on “The CBS Evening News” and so are not included in the documentary.

But Rather does trace the history of Castro’s Cuba and suggests it represents a series of colossal blunders by the U.S. State Department and other parts of the federal government. The Bay of Pigs fiasco was but one of them. Castro was not a Communist when he staged his revolution in 1959 but became one after U.S. attempts to assassinate him, the program says. Castro was looking for a powerful ally and found one in Nikita Khrushchev and the USSR.

Even though the USSR has now been split asunder and communism is largely and fortunately kaput, hard-liners in the United States continue to push for greater sanctions against Castro. When the Cubans shot down that plane, they unwittingly gave such factions a big boost. Ironically or not, American business interests--usually considered politically conservative--are pushing for normalization of relations.

They’d like to see a McDonald’s in Havana as soon as possible.

Rather returns with Castro to the Bay of Pigs itself and they wander around the area together, Castro in his military fatigues. There are also interview segments filmed indoors, with Castro and Rather in suits and ties.

Asked if he is anything like Stalin, Castro is insulted and replies, “Neither that nor 100th of that.” Asked earlier how he would like to be remembered, Castro compares himself to Jesus.

Which figure is he closer to? Viewers obviously can decide for themselves.

* “The Last Revolutionary” airs at 9 tonight on CBS (Channel 2).