comment #1

Michael says ...

Does that mean they wanted to crusade for the downtrodden, or line people up against a wall and execute them?

comment #2

gruver1 says ...

Wells to Michael: You Che dissers or dismissers are all alike. The subject comes up and you all go, "What about the firing squads?" All I can say is what the historical record states, which is that after a hard-fought coup or revolution the hard-core oligarch fascists and hard-core Commies have tended to do the same thing, which is to round up their enemies and shoot them or imprison them for re-education. The Batista regime stank to heaven, and the Batista forces were bastards who killed and tortured and terrorized, etc. So when Castro and his forces took over, it was payback time. Not pretty, not pleasant, but that's the way it was. And here it is almost 60 years later and all guys like you have to say is, "What about the firing squads?" That's a very tedious way to look at things.

comment #3

JasonGeyer says ...

I would imagine that Americans won't be able to stomach watching four hours of Benicio's coffee-house, college trendy, park bench bum facial hair and non-professional salon $5 haircut.

comment #4

Circumvrent says ...

I think a small theatrical followed by a 'premiere' on HBO is actaully a really great idea. I might be reluctant to go to a non-Manhattan theatre and sit through four hours of CHE, but I would certainly shut off the lights and watch it at home one night. And yes, it would get seen by more eyeballs than if it had just hit art house places. AND we all know Soderbergh is a fan of collapsing windows.

A lot of the other stuff in the article didn't have much new - Penn is a pretentious douchebag, and Soderbergh looks miserable (and STILL like Woody Allen doing a CHE-type in BANANAS - Jeff, you were right on the money with that one).

comment #5

Jamieson says ...

Are you saying it's okay to execute people without due process or trial? Batista forces aren't the only ones who were killed during the firing squad campaigns, hundreds of innocent people were murdered as well. I don't think it's improper to criticize the absence of these details from the film. Che is far from an admirable human being.

That said, I'm looking forward to seeing the film for myself and hope the rumors about it playing NYFF are true. I am a fan of Soderbergh's and hope to like it.

comment #6

Mark says ...

I make absolutely no judgement on the American public if they chose to ignore an episodic movie that promised to knock 5 hours out of their day. I would almost judge someone more regarding their lack of responsibilities if they were able to blow 5 straight hours in some dark room, unable to move or talk. I love challenging movies, but please, not physically challenging. I'd much rather watch over two days on DVD.

comment #7

Howlingman says ...

We all deserve to die, even you Mrs. Lovett...even I

comment #8

Josh Massey says ...

Is that picture from the Red Dawn remake? Lea Thompson is still looking good.

comment #9

Entropy says ...

"You Che dissers or dismissers are all alike."

Smart, educated, well read about history and not living in a cliche latte bubble about to burst so the milk runs down your face?

Sorry your little dream of a Marxist utopian 60's didn't come true. So sorry you and the other Che lovers have a view of history that is clouded by the smoke and haze of the overload of booze and dope you took in the 60's "when we was fab". But no matter how many times you mock red staters or mid-America as flakes, you come off ten times worse when you get into the flake-o-rama communist Che loving boat of king of the flakes Sean Penn.

And you know who agrees with me? Barack Obama. Try reading his book and see what he says about Marxists. He is not kind. Or better yet, the next time you go to one of his fundraisers, try listening to the man speak instead of trying to relive your long spent youth by staring at the co-eds at his rally. You might learn a thing or two about politics or world culture.

Che use to sign some of his letters as Stalin II.

I mean really...I'll take the Wall-E teletubbies any day over your old man "living on the edge" dream of Marxist genocide that no longer exists.

And no, I am not a Repub.

Here endeth the lesson. Now ban me. Just like Che would.

comment #10

CinemaPhreek says ...

You Che apologists are all alike as well.

You can't have a legitimate democratic revolution for "the people" is you just cherry pick which of the rights of man you will bestow on them.

"An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind." Simply because your enemy did something to you is not a legitimate rational to do it back them. Especially if you doing so without benefit of trial or even a real tribunal.

Also, if nine people wanted to change world after viewing the film, then you would think it should have been easy for nine people to award the Palme d'Or, Grand Prix or Prix du Jury to said film instead of the consolation "prix" of Prix d'interprétation masculine for del Toro.

comment #11

Edward says ...

Shouldn't we start complaining about Lawerance of Arabia, because of what it leaves out of the story? Better yet, lets ban all copies of Olympiad and Triumph of the Will, because of their Nazi roots.

If it's a good film or a film worth seeing, it shouldn't matter what it leaves out of the story. The fact that it engenders discussion is a good thing.

I'm not supporting Che, because I'm a leftist or because I'm disappointed that the revolution wasn't a success. I'm supporting it because it deserves to be seen. I can't wait.

comment #12

Pelham123 says ...

So, Entropy, you don't see any movie unless Jesus Christ himself is the lead?

comment #13

Adonis says ...

Wells,

So you've never once responded to any of the 3-4 posts I've made about Che, or the world's "misremembering" of what he was/did. I, and several others, have laid out very good, well-cited points. To which you dismiss out-of-hand.

All I can say is you appear to embody the most obvious, cliche stereotype of a soft western citizen, who leads a comfy western life, who idealizes and looks to avoid what a hard man Che was. American demonizes what Michael Vick did to a handful of dogs... but embraces Che? Who killed family after family in the name of making the world a better place?

And then a film decides it's not important to describe how for more than decade he jumped around from country to country killing, killing en masse, and killing dispassionately in cold blood?

It's sad.

comment #14

Entropy says ...

Pelham,

Don't quite get your remark.

Everything in degrees...there is a fine line between omitting details for your story and just being a plain ignoramus to history.

Put another way...I also have no interest in seeing the life story of Barack Obama as produced by the Ku Klux Klan.

Che lovers are the hind end of facile stupidity and ignorance. Life is too short to spend in their company for too long. It's 2008...not 1968.

And remeber Che was also responsible for the execution or aritsts, homosexuals, nuns and freethinkers.

Penn is a moron for getting in that boat. If are in it...so are you.

Even a Democrat critic like Roger Ebert couldn't give The Motorcycle Diaries a good review for how brain dead it was.

comment #15

Arizona Joe says ...

Who is that cutie pie insurrectionist with Del Toro? Franka Potente?

No pienso que tuvo una mujer que parecia como ella. Pero, que linda.

comment #16

Josh Massey says ...

Ebert on Che: "Che Guevara makes a convenient folk hero for those who have not looked very closely into his actual philosophy, which was repressive and authoritarian. Like his friend Fidel Castro, he was a right-winger disguised as a communist. He said he loved the people but he did not love their freedom of speech, their freedom to dissent, or their civil liberties. Cuba has turned out more or less as he would have wanted it to."

Of course, he falls into the ol' liberal trap of describing any lunatic leftist as a conservative in disguise, but the rest of it is spot-on.

comment #17

Rich S. says ...

Guys, if this movie had been a passion project of Peter Jackson or Steven Spielberg, we would not even be having this discussion.

comment #18

p.Vice says ...

Nobody wants to distribute a 4-hour movie? SHOCKER!!!!!!!!

And meanwhile you're complaining that Tarantino needs to make Basterds 120 minutes tops. HYPOCRISY!!!!!!!!!

If Che gets, say, a limited theatrical release, let's think realistically about how many people are actually going to see it. How many people in the country will even have an opportunity to see it as it would like play maybe the top 10 or 20 markets in the country? PRETTY DAMN FEW!!!!!!

You can bang your head against the wall but this idealism reminds me of A.O. Scott's bi-yearly article talking about the most important films of the year that, coincidentally, will maybe play in NY and LA and that 99.9% of the American Public will not have the opportunity to see until they are released on DVD. IDIOCY!!!!!!!!!!!

Film culture is dead, Jeff. Sometimes you've just gotta move on.

comment #19

Entropy says ...

"How many people in the country will even have an opportunity to see it as it would like play maybe the top 10 or 20 markets in the country? "

Well, according to Gruver the only people who do not want to see it are the Red -State Teletubbie types. Using that complex and nuanced logic, I suspect a theatrical gross of Che in its current incarnation would at least gross somewhere between F-911 or Sicko. 50 million domestic with international at 250 and a final gross of 300 million worldwide.

Something like that Gruver? Give or take a few million of course.

I mean c'mon...why the distribs can't see that this is a money bag gravy train with biscuit wheels waiting to happen is beyond me.

comment #20

Michael says ...

Michael to Wells:

I admit, it is a very red and blue way to look at things.

But the reason this is consistently asked is because it has been consistently unanswered, avoided, dismissed, etc., by Che supporters. I give you full credit in that you've done much more than most by actually acknowledging the historical record, Jeff. I think it's telling that you compare Che to most other hard core fasicsts, commies. And are you saying that they were no better than the Batista regime? Was that a defense or an indictment? Guys like me ask, 'what about the firing squads?' because it's pretty damned significant to Che's place in history and his legacy in Cuba, and they (the squads) are so thoroughly ignored by those who sympathize with him. It's like someone defending the Bush administration and complaining, "geez, all you can talk about is, 'what about Iraq'?" It's intellectually dishonest NOT to talk about the man's brutality. I shouldn't have phrased the issue so flippantly, and that's my mistake.

comment #21

Mgmax, le Corbeau says ...

"Like his friend Fidel Castro, he was a right-winger disguised as a communist."

Holy fuck, I respect Ebert tremendously but that's one of the goddam dumbest things I've ever read.

What exactly was right-wing about Che? His commitment to Burkean conceptions of the limited state and personal liberty? His efforts to promote Hayekian free markets?

Twentieth Century History to Rog, if repressive, strongman-glorifying, centrally-planned, anti-Semitic, anti-gay regimes are all "right-wing," then what the fuck was Stalin? What's Castro? What's Mugabe? And what exactly constitutes a left-wing regime, Thatcher's England?

This, of course, is exactly why the glorification (or mascotization) of Che is so dunderheaded, and why it matters if Soderbergh whitewashes him. Right and left are virtually meaningless terms when applied to the largely indistinguishable totalitarian movements of the 20th century. With a slightly different set of allies and NO change in behavior or ideology, Che would be considered a fascist and the same people who worship him would despise him-- for no clearer or more principled reason.

comment #22

gansibele says ...

It'll be constantly -and tediously if you want to call it that way- brought up until somebody makes an honest movie about Guevara. Sorderbergh obviously didn't. End of the question.

You can say "it's the way it is" all you want, but it sounds as hollow and disgusting as the people who say "hey, it's a war, there are going to be innocent victims". Payback has nothing to do with justice much less with social justice. For every criminal that was shot at those firing squads there were ten that were shot for opposing Castro's rule, and that's the historical record in case you are wondering. Che himself boasted about it. It's in his diaries.

If someboy were to make a movie about Batista and how he unionized Cuba's Army, took down corrupt governments twice (in one coup he even had the Communist party as an ally) and gave up power twice and called for elections; and that movie glossed over the thousands that were killed and tortured because of his regime(s), would you say oppositio to such movie was "tedious"?

But the comparison is besides the point. I have never seen a Batista t-shirt or a hagiography. The man doesn't deserve one. Neither does Che. I'm happy that there are rumblings that the movie will be banned from Cuba because it depicts Castro in a bad light (Alfredo Guevara, chieftain of Cuba's Film Institute said so today). Cubans don't need to suffer through another paean to their victimary.

comment #23

gansibele says ...

Oh and by the way, the correct Spanish would be "Di la verdad".

comment #24

ryanv says ...

it's been my experience that there's just as many brain dead materialistic tubbos in blue territory (I'm in DC) apt to change the channel as there are elsewhere.

crass materialism, which has become the essence of post-Reagan American capitalism, that Che most certainly would be against, along with that cute little robot, is every bit as rampant here, even among the well educated who just tossed out their old cell phones to get a new iPhone, as it is anywhere. Che wouldn't be any more fond of NYC or LA, a place synonymous with American sprawl and materialism, that he was of Batista Cuba.

comment #25

Arizona Joe says ...

We're in a for a big change. That's for sure. But Che is a wholly inappropriate model, and not even a metaphor for change.

The Europeans mistreated indigenous peoples, and then many streets in South America turned into a river of piss. Che led a South American emancipation wrapped in Marxism. Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales continue the fight. (This is another example of Bush bungling American foreign policy, but Iraq obscures it.)

We have our own set of problems with race, inequality and big business. We don't need a romantic Che. More like an updated funky version of FDR.

comment #26

LexG says ...

Does this movie feature people getting OWNED?

comment #27

Mgmax, le Corbeau says ...

Yeah, they all wind up wearing the T-shirt.

comment #28

filmfan says ...

Che should be shown in two parts on HBO. And what is the big deal if it gets Emmy and Golden Globe noms but not any Oscar noms. I just don't see it going over well as a four hour film shown in theaters.

comment #29

Count Thread says ...

You Hitler dissers or dismissers are all alike. The subject comes up and you all go, "What about the Holocaust?" All I can say is what the historical record states, which is that after a hard-fought coup or revolution the hard-core redshirts and hard-core brownshirts have tended to do the same thing, which is to round up their enemies and shoot them or imprison them for re-education. The Weimar regime stank to heaven, and the Weimer forces were bastards who killed and tortured and terrorized, etc. So when Hitler and his forces took over, it was payback time. Not pretty, not pleasant, but that's the way it was. And here it is almost 80 years later and all guys like you have to say is, "What about the Holocaust/Kristallnacht/World War II" That's a very tedious way to look at things.

comment #30

erniesouchak says ...

I could swear I heard a couple weeks ago that Focus was distributing this. Check with Exhibitor Relations, Wells!

comment #31

Gaydos says ...

El Jeffe: Please do yourself and your readers a favor and skip the political discussions from now on. You've just made a great defense of the Bush Administration's waterboarding and worse.

Obama just phoned to ask you to take down his picture from the site.

And Mr. Penn, I'd like to look carefully at those powerful toenails around the sacred Cannes jury table of wisdom. The elitism and arrogance in those remarks is certainly nothing to cause any shock to experienced observers of the Westside moneyed class, but it's still a disturbing sign of how far we must all travel to escape the myopia of our privileged and/or impoverished prejudices.

Now let's get back to Tarantino Land, where no one has to know anything about anything or be able to spell it and all toenails are created equal.

Oh, one last thing, for those outraged by the Bushies' attacks on our Constitution: they haven't had a free election in Cuba for about, oh, a zillion years. That's spelled Z I L L I O N.

Not a lot of people at the Cannes Carlton know that.

comment #32

EOTW says ...

Penn's got millions of dollars and got leftie friends in Hollywood, why doesn't he put his own money where his fat mouth is and release it himself? Who cares if it's 4 hours? And yeah, that toenail quote is stupid and condescending, although, it doesn't compare to the whole bloody underwear debacle. Hard to believe I ever admire this guy's talent. Of course, he had some back then, somewhere.

comment #33

JCEFalconi says ...

I don't how the debate about the Ernesto Guevara's achievements pertains to the movie.

Fact is there's no justice in any war, anytime men conclude the only way to make life better is to take weapons and kill other men, horrors and injustices will be done. Yes, even in World War II. You can say there was a life-saving rationale in executing the population of Hiroshima, as much as you can say there was a "rationale" in executing Batista's counter-revolutionary forces. It was a clear message and also a chance they couldn't take keeping trained soldiers around itching for the chance to be funded by the US and strike back, see Bahia de Cochinos.

Also about Ebert's comment, he is talking out of his ass, Che wasn't a repressor, only because his role in CUba post-revolution had nothing to do with police action, he was in charge of rehabilitating/starting Cuba's agricultural industry.

comment #34

lionsfan says ...

Basically, Jeff, I think you never have the slightest idea what you're talking about when you write about politics. Your comments are that bad.

As for Cuba, it's not just the firing squads. It's the repression of dissent, of homosexuals. The military adventurism in Africa. The absurd willingness to be a satellite state of the Evil Empire. The poverty, the lack of consumer goods, the creation of a grasping, self-interested apparatchik class as bad as any in the Soveit Union. The hovering secret police. The absolute lack of anything apporaching genuine personal freedoms. The near-eradication of what was once a thriving tourist industry. It's quite a bit, in other words.

And, perhaps most gratingly, economic failure after economic failure. The kind that would have brought administrations in democratic countries to collapse and resignation. But in Cuba life simoly goes on because the repressive government has refused to deal with its incompetence and dunderheaded economic policies. So much for the, uh, "socialism" that Che was so enamored of. So much, too, for any genuine love of the campesinos by him.I'd quote Lord Acton on power here, but I'm sure the quote is famiiar to most everybody.

Che has no record to discuss, only a few murderous episodes. His boss and comrade Castro has no real record to speak of either, some relatively paltry achievements (especially in health care) against revelations on a daily basis for almost 50 years which do nothing but remind of Hobbes's view that life is "nasty, brutish and short." Well, it certainly is generally that in the "Pearl of the Antilles" under Communism.

comment #35

lionsfan says ...

It's also appallingly stupid, Jeff, to opine that firing squads are a kind of reasonable expectation come regime change.

Even if that were the case (and it emphatically is not), that is an awfully amoral view of things. A kind of "things are tough all over" sort of reaction. May you never live in a nation that takes such actions as an "inevitable" result of political upheaval.

comment #36

gansibele says ...

@JCEFalconi: Che was the commander of La Cabaña, where the firing squads took place. He personally ordered most of them. That's definitely a "repressor" role.

Then he was president of the National Bank and afterwards Minister of Industry. He was never in charge of anything to do with agriculture. Agriculture in Cuba was regulated by the INRA, and the person in charge was Antonio Nuñez Jimenez, an old friend and confidante of Castro.

Before you say Ebert is talking out of his ass, make sure your own cheeks are firmly clenched.

comment #37

BurmaShave says ...

I can tell just from that picture that Catalina Moreno is going to piss me off in this movie, just like she has in all her movies. Enough with the bovine staring.

comment #38

tug says ...

" You Che dissers or dismissers are all alike. The subject comes up and you all go, "What about the firing squads?"

Okay, how about an examination of Che's successful boast that Communism would grow the Cuban economy by 10% a year?

For awesome, dramatic effect, they should also show the scene from his life where he abandons his men in battle and surrenders with a full clip in his pistol, telling his captors that he is Che and is worth more to them alive than dead (they thought otherwise).

comment #39

tug says ...

Ooh, ooh - or the scene from his life when he personally executed a 15 year-old POW at point blank rage for refusing to kneel before him, and then when the other prisoners screamed out in horror, he empted the rest of his clip into their cell, wounding several.

Take that Batista loyalists!

comment #40

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