alberto_cascante

Oliver Stone, probably one of the most relevant filmmakers of the last decades in the United States, has been trying to get the American public –one of the most ignorant and alienated populations among developed countries– into alternative sides of what in the USA has been called the "official story". Comandante is not an exception in that aim, and it may approach the viewers to some topics that big media corporations and the military-industrial complex have been boycotting through the years in order to avoid the public to ask their government about some big questions. Stone's filmography evidences his own interest in the last half of the recent century –the half he was born in and the events, after WW2, that bring the United States to become what we know today–, and the plots that –in his own words– diminished individual freedom and democratic values in "the land of the free and the home of the brave!" Position for which he has often been criticized "for promoting conspiracy theories and alleged historical inaccuracies." This documentary is an important effort, now that Fidel Castro –one of the 10 most influential politicians of the last century– is probably close to the end of his life. Some analysts have said that the 20th Century will have officially ended after Castro's death.

La Rosa Blanca, based on the novel by B. Traven, belongs to a long list of Mexican movie titles that unfortunately and for different means were "enlatadas". In this case, Gerardo de la Torre, novelist and script writer, that presented the film a few years ago within a festival dedicated to forbidden movies, tells us that the real reasons behind the banning were not the usual political matters to which we are used in our country, but to the scenes that Christiane Martel, future wife of Miguelito Alemán, son of former president of México, did in the film. Nothing outrageous for our time, nevertheless, owner of delightful breasts, she pours herself in a seductive and erotic way, unveiling the stupor of the correct minds of the epoch.

The movie, on the contrary, is extremely didactic around the causes that lead to the Mexican Oil Expropiation of 1938, decreed by President Lázaro Cárdenas. It shows the predatory ways of the foreign industry involved in the exploitation of natural resources in México, and it was in accordance with the nationalist "priism" speech of the era to which both of the names above worked for. It's a great cinematographic piece, that must be seen by the last Mexican generations, so consumed by neo liberal and globalization slogans.