Balancing act on Castro

“Looking for Fidel,” which premieres tonight on HBO, is Oliver Stone’s sequel or addendum or companion piece to his “Comandante,” a Spanish-TV documentary on Fidel Castro that HBO has U.S. rights to but has declined to run. Although Stone is an avowed fan of his subject -- he has at various times called Castro “moral,” “selfless” and “one of the Earth’s wisest people” -- he does ask pointed questions. (He is given to the odd introductory statement, such as “Americans have fixations on what they call ‘democratic values,’ ” but this may be construed as tactical.)

Yet Castro has not been Castro all these long decades to be easily pinned down. Like politicians closer to home, he can be disingenuous, or not exactly answer the question being asked, or take refuge in arguable homilies like “I am not the one in power -- it is the people who are in power,” or “The prisons are the universities for the delinquents.” (All quotes are taken from subtitles.)

Where “Comandante” focused on Castro el hombre, and was criticized in some corners for being too soft on the old bearded dictator, “Fidel,” shot a year later to address HBO’s concerns about balance, takes narrow aim at two events of last spring: Cuba’s almost summary execution of three men convicted of hijacking a ferry to get to the United States, and the near-simultaneous imprisonment of several dozen dissidents. And it counters Castro’s comments with those of the local opposition. Fidel, in fact, does not come off particularly well here.

He sees himself as “a kind of spiritual leader” or “moral chief” to his people, and can barely conceive of the possibility of retiring from the comandante-ship he has held for more than 40 years -- he is too obviously in love with his Revolution, whose life he seems to feel is indexed to his own. He glories in Cuba’s universal free education and health care and low infant mortality rate -- there is wonderful archival footage of him delivering a speech on the subject, as rain soaks his hair and beard and the papers he reads from. (“Three more pages!” the famously logorrheic leader declares.) And any hint of deviation from the revolutionary socialist program that achieved them is considered subversive.

Stone would like to put this in context, however, and through sudden flurries of rapidly cut film clips, he hints at a long history of American intervention in Cuban affairs, suggesting that Castro’s constant unease and rhetorical overkill as regards the United States, with which he sees himself eternally at war, is not the product of simple paranoia.

The director also follows Castro briefly into the colorful, decaying streets of Havana, where he is surrounded by adoring crowds; and to the doctor, where Castro, in his mid-70s, is shown to have “the heart rate of a fit 32-year-old” (“I declare myself -- healthy!” he says); and to a sort of press conference with eight men who attempted to hijack a plane to the U.S., a bizarre scene that uncomfortably captures the strange form of self-critical jurisprudence that seems to be a feature of totalitarian regimes.

The Castro films are the first nonfiction works from the director of “Platoon,” “JFK” and “Wall Street.” “Fidel,” at least, does not suggest he has any particular facility for the form.

It is less a full-blown documentary, in any case, than three or four jerkily intercut, videotaped interviews, with a few side trips for air and color. (Stone also works in some shots of good-looking young women dancing -- like you do.)

Technically, the film is a lumpy, jumpy mess: The shaky camerawork is further spoiled by pans and zooms and “Batman” angles, and the inscrutable editing reads like the work of a man who never got over seeing his first music video. And with Castro speaking in Spanish, an English translator speaking over him and Stone sometimes speaking over them both, as a dissonant semi-electronic score pulses below, the film has an air of frantic instability and unease, as if something terrible were about to happen -- Castro’s head exploding, or Marines, or Martians, busting through the wall of his handsome mid-century-modern office.

Perhaps Stone felt this was necessary to distinguish his film from a segment of “60 Minutes.” (He does sound strangely like Mike Wallace, in fact.) Or perhaps he is just strange.

Nevertheless, it’s an engrossing hour, recommended to anyone with the least interest in the world beyond the shining seas, or the big characters of the 20th century. (Castro is not quite so big in the 21st, but he is still here and not going anywhere soon). On paper, at least, the unseen “Comandante” would seem the more interesting film, covering as it does subjects ranging from the Bay of Pigs to Brigitte Bardot, Vietnam to Viagra, fatherhood, Hemingway and the single-bullet theory. But if Castro’s testimony here is only marginally more revealing than that of, say, Condoleezza Rice, there are other clues to his larger character, deeper mysteries and inescapable humanity.

The camera moves in close to take in every pore, gray hair and age spot. The comandante’s hands are frequently focused upon, his fingernails long but immaculately clean. He takes notes in a tight little hand. And on his desk are neatly aligned figurines representing the beloved Mexican comedian Cantinflas. Whatever else crosses his blotter, Castro faces these every day, and if it’s too much to suggest they’re Fidel’s “Rosebud,” more than anything else in this movie they suggest that there is more to him than the Revolution.

*

‘Looking for Fidel’

Where: HBO

When: Premieres 8-9 tonight.

Rating: The network has rated the film TV-14 (may not be suitable for children under 14 years old).

Director, interviewer, Oliver Stone. Executive producers, Alvaro Longoria, Fernando Sulichin and Sheila Nevins.