“El Libertador” Film Seen Through Venezuelan Eyes
By Rachelle Krygier
El Libertador, a Venezuelan film about Simon Bolivar — the leader of the South American independence movement against Spanish Rule in the early 1800’s — started airing in American theaters last week. The movie is nominated for the 2014 Oscars under the foreign language category.
Simon Bolivar is indeed an important figure in South America (more so for the countries he fought for: Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela) and the world. He should be known by anyone with a general interest in world history.
A film that reaches worldwide cinemas would have been a wonderful opportunity to bring him, as well as the history of the South American independence movement, closer to the rest of the world. Sadly, the film doesn’t do a good job in explaining either the movement or Bolivar’s life.
Being Venezuelan, a film about Simon Bolivar immediately caught my attention not only because it was produced in my country and got nominated for an Oscar, but also (and mostly) because I grew up hearing Hugo Chavez’s constant glorification of the leader.
Chavez used Bolivar as a figure to spark passion and hope among the people and to legitimize his own actions. He renamed Venezuela, it is now the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. He called his revolution the Bolivarian Revolution which he paired with the independence movement, almost alienating those who aren’t Chavistas from their country’s own history.
Chavez went as far into the symbolism as to order the exhumation of Bolivar’s bones (literally, they opened the tomb and grabbed the bones) and the creation of a new 3d image of his face based on their study. The new image is exposed in posters throughout the country.
I knew that many of the ideals that Bolivar defended, would resonate as Chavistas to me during the movie, because I absorbed Chavez’s appropriation of Bolivarian ideals very early in my learning years.
But I didn’t expect the film to be such a narrow and simple glorification of the leader that leaves aside his and other character’s humanity, reducing the South American independence movement to a desire of a single person that commanded over other people, who in reality played much bigger roles (like Manuela Saenz), than those (almost pathetic roles) they are given in the film. The amount of misconceptions and misleading arguments is troubling.
For example, Francisco de Miranda, a war strategist who worked in revolutions worldwide, is portrayed as a despicable traitor in the film. Bolivar surrendered Miranda to the Spanish Crown, who put him in prison.
Miranda, having consulted the patriot government, was about to sign an agreement with the Spanish Crown given that there were too many lost battles and lives on the patriot’s side.
But many argue that it was the other way around; that Bolivar and others betrayed Miranda by giving him in, because they didn’t want to follow his orders anymore. That’s why they didn’t give Miranda even minutes to explain what he was doing, and why there was no trial, no lawyer and no judge.
The nature of the conflict that took place in the middle of the war is still debated. But in the movie, the scene shows Miranda as not believing in the patriot cause, as if he had made decisions on purpose to undermine the fight. That is one of many scenes where history is portrayed in a way the viewer understands Bolivar as an innocent hero.
Another important example is the last scene. The last scene was evidently crafted to suggest that Bolivar didn’t die of what has long been proven he died of: tuberculosis. It implies that a group conspired against him, leaving him as a martyr in the eyes of any blameless viewer. Martyrs can logically be more easily glorified than leaders who die of a common sickness.
It all made sense to me though, when I found out that La Villa del Cine financed the production of El Libertador.
When Chavez was alive and in power — calling Bush a donkey and every capitalist leader imperialist — he drew the support of some film producers and stars like Sean Penn and Oliver Stone (who directed a propagandistic documentary “South of the Border”) to clean his image abroad.
Producing private films was too expensive, nearly impossible. The government created La Villa del Cine, a state-owned production firm that selected and financed certain private films that would legitimize its historical epitomes — El Libertador, of course, being one of those.
That’s why the film is almost propaganda. That’s why it tergiversates facts, why the main character is overtly eulogized, his life simplified and the South American Independence war ridiculously condensed to one dimension. Because, of course, attention couldn’t be driven out of Bolivar’s quasi-godly qualities (including his physical aspect, FYI he was not near as good looking as Edgar Ramirez).
