Word: ch
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...movie's second half has more appeal to a general audience, perhaps because most of the other Presidents are less famous or notorious than Chávez, perhaps because the first half has conditioned us to a rigorously genial treatment of them. Lula da Silva brags that Brazil paid off the IMF debt and that the country now has a $260 billion surplus. (Irmao, can you spare us a dime?) Morales, the first indigenous President of Bolivia, says he considers himself "less a President than a union leader." The Illinois-educated Correa says smilingly that the U.S. can again have...
...international celebrity as any of his subjects, Stone is ever willing to interrupt an interview for some schmoozing or fun. He kicks a football around with Chávez, shares coca leaves with Morales, quizzes Kirchner on how many pairs of shoes she owns. (A little annoyed at the implicit comparison to Imelda Marcos, Kirchner replies, "If I were a man, would you ask me how many pairs of pants I own?") Accompanying Chávez to the mud hut where he was born, Stone directs the President in a scene: ride around the yard on the bicycle...
...that capitalism can be predatory and that priests, in the U.S. and Paraguay (where the President is a former Catholic bishop), are all liberation theologians. And in both films, Barack Obama's election is heralded as triggering an era of enlightenment. "I hope he will be a new Roosevelt," Chávez says at the end of the film, "and I hope he starts a new New Deal...
...final credits rolled and the house lights came up, the director and his star received the crowd's vocal warmth. Chávez went to the bleachers to greet a few people, then descended the steps to the orchestra area. Someone asked him a question, and he spoke for five minutes or more in Spanish, in a conversational voice that not many could hear. Stone, slightly behind, seemed to wonder, Hey, whose movie is this? and joined Chávez as he shouted, "Viva Oliver!" He made it sound almost like...
...small retinue of guards led them down the steps to the lobby, and on the way out, Chávez smiled and shook a few more hands. Quite a powerful grip, Mary Corliss told me. But then, he is Venezuela's strongman...