It really is fascinating the unrelenting marketing of this man. Someone said that the brand identification of Che started with that ubique image of the man from the sixties. I was bored on this Read the Constitution Monday and decided to go have a tortured evening watching such stuff to see if I could figure this thing out. I did not, sad to say, nor for that matter did I ever figure out what on earth was the fascination with the Grateful Dead.
What I saw, I have to admit was a loving embrace of the revolutionary and an almost total whitewash of the man. There is nothing of the person, only the revolutionary with a twist, that of an almost morbid fascination with gritty wounds. Nobody ever gets better in this movie, but there seems to be an endless stream of bullet wound trajectories and woozy camera angles to fizz in and out of consciousness and blood drippy fingers. It is almost like the movie tries to make metaphor for what the propaganda is supposed to do for you.
It also says it in the credits that this part of the movie (its actually a two parter, just like the old double feature, so thats over four hours- of Lawrence Of Arabia doting of loving embrace)that what follows is based on Che's actual diaries, and if this is what passes for his diaries, then there was absolutely no humor in the man. Just what you would expect from reading the memoirs of a sociopath. Whatever plot interpretation, quips or jokes, or for that matter character depth is absent. Benecio Del Toro is a fine actor and many, many fine latino actors are in it up to and including a surprising short sequence with Lou Diamond Phillips but alas , no Edward Olmos. This thing is put together with the exact literal translation of Che's personal notes with; I want to say an almost sacrosanct devotion to every word. I am saying almost because its not because I studied Che, or even thought of him as anything other than a misguided killer on a Statezilla binge, but I could only determine the relentless drive and heroic struggle of the sleeping in the rain, playing with buddy guts and the 'doing what needs to be done' task type stuff of the 'trooper life', sorry that does not include catholes and stinking to hell, but the romantic Zapatista, the Simon Bolivar type of revolutionary that pissed off Texans once or twice and that seem to be in need of another ass whuppin as we speak.
But what I did get as a student of history and that usually includes military history if you get into history at all, you will be struck by how absolutely by the book the memoir and the tremendously EPIC four hours of film are to Mao's Little Red Book on guerrilla warfare. This is the motherlode of asymetrical warfare which our current baffoon in office Barack Hussien Obama seems to not only do alittle doting on dictators himself but perhaps might even fancy himself as one by the time he is through having his way with America, as in U.S, America, home of the free, land of the brave, which, Che makes quite a bit of hay blaming America in trying to unite the 'helpless peasants' behind the blood drenched cause by circling and underlining American Imperialism, shake, stir, repeat.
Any way, if you go to this thing with anything other than stars in your eyes "for the revolutionary struggle of communism" then its pretty much bound to tick you off in a few places.
I only saw maybe a handful of people at the theatre with me, so, hopefully, this thing gets sold to the latino market and fizzles out as nostalgia for sixties prop that it most definately is. Long Live The Revolution and Off Topic
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