The Che Films

[Red Future]

What do people think of the Che films that Steven Soderbergh directed? I watched them recently and wanted to know what other leftists thought about them.
Personally i thought the part 1 film was superior to the part 2 film

[fa2991]

Everyone likes part 1 better, I think. They're quite good.

[Magón]

I find the reason, (at least with my friends and family), why everyone likes Part 1 better is because Part 2 is the more depressing of the two. Personally I like them both the same.

[Kléber]

I thought they were ok. They turned Che into a two-dimensional cyborg attack drone, because they wanted to counteract the "weakling" image from The Motorcycle Diaries. Oh and you had to be familiar with his war diaries and life story to have a proper idea what was going on throughout the first part. Movies shouldn't dumb down their subject matter but it's really sad how bourgeois culture has degenerated that they can't even do a proper biopic anymore, it's like their artistic faculties have all been infected and rendered inoperable by postmodernism. As an arthouse picture, i guess it was entertaining, but otherwise it wasn't something that someone totaly unfamiliar with Guevara's life could watch and get inspired by. The only real storytelling came in the second part and that was just depressing. And how can Soderbergh say "A revolution like this will never happen again" when a rural-based mass movement is dealing with a similar crisis of power in Nepal.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I'd like to make a horror movie that somehow featured Che. Like, some dumb American college students go to Bolivia, and unintentionally awaken the vengeful zombie of Che Guevara when they inadvertently have sex on his unmarked grave site or something. The only problem is that apparently his hands were severed from his body before burial, and that would be a problem...can't have a handless zombie.

[praxis1966]

I'd like to make a horror movie that somehow featured Che. Like, some dumb American college students go to Bolivia, and unintentionally awaken the vengeful zombie of Che Guevara when they inadvertently have sex on his unmarked grave site or something. The only problem is that apparently his hands were severed from his body before burial, and that would be a problem...can't have a handless zombie.

Which reminds me of something... I wonder why Soderbergh didn't see fit to show him being dismembered. Seems to me that a couple of Americans standing around watching the Bolivian special forces units mutilate his dead body would've been a pretty powerful image.

[x359594]

...Seems to me that a couple of Americans standing around watching the Bolivian special forces units mutilate his dead body would've been a pretty powerful image.

It's not that Che's body was mutilated out of malice; his hands were removed for identification purposes so that his corpse could be quickly disposed of. Eventually his remains were recovered and sent to Cuba where they were interred.

Returning to the film itself, there are two and possibly three versions in existence. The US version, a Latin American version that I saw in Mexico that has footage seen in the trailer but not in the US release, and a version that was shown only once at the Cannes Film Festival.

[RedSonRising]

I think it was a portrayal of what the man experienced and what he believed in the context of the events surrounding his life. Objective without shying away from the ideology.

[mykittyhasaboner]

They were very entertaining films, but of course they had their faults as people are saying.

For example, if one had no knowledge of the Cuban campaign prior to watching the movie, they wouldn't know that the first battle upon landing in Cuba was a complete disaster. It kind of cuts forward really far after the scene of them crossing from Mexico to Cuba. That was really the only thing that bothered me.

[RadioRaheem84]

Soderbergh said that the black and white parts were supposed to be what the public saw and what popular history records and the color parts are supposed to resemble what changed history.

It's supposed to be a movie about dialectics.

[praxis1966]

It's not that Che's body was mutilated out of malice; his hands were removed for identification purposes so that his corpse could be quickly disposed of. Eventually his remains were recovered and sent to Cuba where they were interred.

Yeah, at the behest of CIA agents, or at least that's what some documents said a few years back that were released under a FOIA order.