"South of the Border" Movie Review: Oliver Stone Teams Up With His Presidential Pals

Jose Ibanez

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More About

• South of the Border (Documentary)
• Oliver Stone
• Hugo Chavez
• Raul Castro
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media

So one-sided that it nearly validates what the right says about Hollywood's liberal crusaders, Oliver Stone's essay/lecture/travelogue South of the Border is propaganda in the form of a home movie, documenting Stone's summer vacation spent in the collegial company of the figureheads of various South American states. About ten minutes in, the iconic filmmaker appears onscreen for the first time alongside Hugo Chávez, the charismatic, controversial leader of Venezuela. This is not a sit-down interview; the filmmaker isn't directing questions at Chávez or apparently directing much of anything — they're just hanging out. Afforded extraordinarily casual access to Chávez, Raúl Castro, the Kirchners of Argentina, Paraguay's Fernando Lugo, and other heads of state, Stone generally allows his subjects to set the course of conversation, avoiding not only the tough questions about their records on human rights and allegations of corruption but also pretty much any question that might get in the way of each leader's sales pitch for his regime or the notion of the U.S. as the big, bad man holding them down. The construction of false realities for political gain is the subject of much of Stone's own work — so why is he content to take each leader's practiced-for-the-camera spiel at face value, never pushing for information or conducting interviews on any deeper level than a photo op? South of the Border's subjects are masters at cooking bullshit, and Stone just eats it up.