The Secret of the Great Red Spot by Leonardo Ramirez

(In the photo above, Stone meets Maduro at his presidential palace in December 2013.) For the absolute last thing Venezuelans, or anyone else, needs is more Chávez agitprop. Now, just at the moment when chavistas need to start reassessing their departed leader and begin thinking critically of the way ahead, Stone has set out to provide Maduro and his cronies with a blank check in the form of his latest bio-documentary, Mi Amigo Hugo. (Maduro waited too long and bungled this macabre project.) Aping Chávez’s style of speech, dress, and mannerisms, and even claiming to have twice received visitations from a little bird reincarnating Chávez, Maduro is now leading his country into an abyss of violence, repression, and economic chaos, all in Chávez’s name, following Chávez’s policies. In Venezuela, Chávez has been all but deified, and pronounced ' more alive than ever' by his chosen heir Nicolás Maduro, who initially announced plans to truss up his corpse and display it, Lenin-style, in a glass tomb. Not so with Stone’s most recent victim, the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. But Nixon and JFK concerned men from decades past whose legacies, for good or ill, are matters of historical record. Stone has countered that his films are meant to spark reflection and cause viewers to 'start investigating on own.' This surely would be easier for them to do if they weren’t taking his falsehoods and blunders as their starting points.

But even the progressive the Guardian has trashed Stone’s work, calling his 1991 JFK a 'magic bullet … veering erratically between misconceptions and outright lies in a determined effort to avoid the facts.' There has been much more faultfinding of this sort from both liberals and conservatives, but the upshot is that Stone cannot be trusted to present the truth, even when shooting biographies of people who matter.

The avowedly leftist filmmaker’s 1995 epic Nixon provoked outcries from the Nixon family over its depiction of the former president (as alcoholic and unhinged), as well as detailed objections from Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s national security advisor and secretary of state. Oliver Stone has rarely shied away from highly creative finagling with the truth.

The Secret of the Great Red Spot by Leonardo Ramirez