Friday
Sep032010
Movie Review - 'South of the Border'
Friday, September 3, 2010 at 4:02AM | South of the Border
Directed by Oliver Stone  |
Documentaries are sometimes incorrectly elevated to the status of “non-fiction films.” That’s the aim,
certainly, but many documentaries have no interest in chronicling any topic in an objective way. To be fair, it’s
impossible to be objective when reporting on anything; the minute part of an interview is cut for time or a fact is omitted
in pursuit of a cleaner narrative, whatever it is – a news report, an obituary, or a feature-length film - has become
subjective. It may not be pointedly subjective, but it's still only one version of events.
And then there’s Oliver
Stone. Certainly, nobody would confuse Stone with a filmmaker who leaves axes for others to
grind. His career is steeped in reexamining American history and the policies of her government, to put it mildly.
On the one hand, JFK, a gorgeously assembled three-hour dissemination of conspiracy theories, opened up files long
sealed as classified information because of new public demand. On the other, his looks at the lives of Richard Nixon and
George W. Bush repeatedly stumble over themselves.
Stone became a documentarian earlier this decade, traveling to Havana to unlock the past and reign of Fidel Castro with
Commandante. He returned to Latin America in 2008 to film South of the Border, discussing the changing face of the geopolitical
landscape with newly elected leaders in several South American countries.
Among those leaders, of course, is Hugo Chávez, the charismatic and controversial President of Venezuela, with whom Stone
spends about a quarter of this film. There is no other side presented during Stone’s segment on Chávez, which would be at
the very least practical and probably necessary if this were truly an attempt to be a documentary. Without it, it’s worth
wondering if Stone has even tried to paint a fair picture or only the one he wants to see. There is a belief that
documentaries shouldn’t showcase authorship, and there are still a few examples of that, but even great documentaries,
especially in the past decade, have sidestepped fact finding in favor of a predetermined story.
For all of about ten seconds, Stone tackles the common and important refrain about human rights violations under Chávez. The
director, who also narrates his film, says that American ally Colombia has a worse record. And…scene.
What Stone leaves out – and with a 78-minute running time for South of the Border, there’s plenty of room for a more
stringent investigation of the truth – is that Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, and Amnesty International have all called
Venezuelan policies into question during Chávez’ decade-long reign.
Some movies are slow because they're put together wrong or there simply isn't
enough to sustain 100 minutes or whatever the length is. Other movies are designed to be slow because they're methodical,
concerned with the details. 
The problem with 
