Is Fidel Castro the devil incarnate, or a heroic icon of resistance and social justice? Only a propagandist would pose that question as an either/or proposition; an artist should be held to a much more rigorous standard. A crude answer to decades of anti-Castro hysteria in the U.S., Estela Bravo's disgraceful documentary Fidel could have been financed by the man himself, assuming that he'd be vain enough to commission it. Less a movie than the ceremonial unveiling of a bronze statue in the city square, Fidel forgoes a more pragmatic view of its subject for one as dubiously loaded as an Iraqi ballot box, presenting Cuba as an island paradise burdened only by the 40-year American blockade. Any cogent points Bravo raises about the resilience of Castro's socialist regime or the irrational anger directed against it are undermined by her refusal to raise any objections, even just to put them to rest. The only three seconds of dissent during the film's entire 91 minutes escape from a meet-and-greet with CBS's Mike Wallace, who slips in a couple of obvious questions—"What happened to democracy? What happened to free elections?"—that apparently merit no response. Connected by the kind of austere voiceover found in a '50s educational film, Fidel forges a cut-and-paste reactionary history out of archival footage, video interviews with family and friends, and nods of approval from public figures such as Alice Walker, Gabriel García Márquez, Harry Belafonte, and Sydney Pollack. Starting with Castro's childhood, Bravo charts the major events in his life, with a special emphasis on his defiance of U.S. interests and his impact on revolutionary movements the world over. Equal time is allotted to Castro's alliance with Che Guevara, the 25-month uprising to overthrow Batista, the Bay Of Pigs disaster, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Elián Gonzalez case, and Cuba's military presence in Angola, which is viewed as a major blow against apartheid in South Africa. Bravo finds the heart of U.S. discontent in the Agrarian Reform Act, which nationalized and redistributed arable land (70 percent of it foreign-owned), among other sweeping changes in health care, education, and housing. On the embargo, she raises a pointed question: Why does the U.S. persist in its grudge against Cuba when it opens up for business in China, North Korea, and Vietnam? But rather than direct another round of tough questions in Castro's direction, Bravo shows the charismatic dictator rallying the masses or engaging in cheery photo ops with Nelson Mandela, Muhammad Ali, Jack Nicholson, Ted Turner, and other celebrities. Less is said about the jailing of political dissidents than about the fun fact that Castro wasn't a particularly graceful dancer. "History will absolve me" rings like a clarion call in Fidel, but true histories cut with a scalpel, not a butter knife.