I have long been interested in Che Guevara, although I am hardly an admirer, and I’ve read scores of books about him, including his Bolivia war diary and his other works.

So as a student of history, as well as film, I forced myself to sit through the two long films about Che Guevara last week on the IFC cable channel.

Directed by Steven Soderbergh with Benicio Del Toro as Guevara, the film was made in two parts with the first part dealing with Guevara’s participation in the Cuban revolution, while the second part jumps ahead to Guevara’s vain and failed attempt to bring violent Communist revolution to Bolivia.

The film smartly skips right over Guevara’s role as the bloody chief executioner of scores of Cubans after the revolution, and his subsequent disastrous handling of the Cuban economy as the minister of finance.

I say smartly, as Del Toro, who produced the films, and director Soderbergh are great admirers of the late revolutionary. Rather, they are admirers of Guevara’s phony iconic reputation. The reality is quite another matter.

The films show Guevara in his best light, with numerous scenes of him healing the sick and wounded (Guevara was a doctor before he was a murderer), but they only offer one scene of him executing people. And those men were Cuban deserters, rapists and murderers. There were no scenes of him putting bullets through prisoners’ heads, or gleefully overseeing mass executions in Cuba.

Humbert Fontova, like me, does not share the romantic view of Guevara. He wrote an interesting piece for www.newsmax.com that offers another point of view.                    

 

Tweet  Print This Post

Tags: movies // Add Comment »