Che Guevara on the Silver Screen

Canada Free Press ^ | 12/9/08 | Humberto Fontova

[slickeroo]

Che Guevara on the Silver Screen

By Humberto Fontova Wednesday, December 10, 2008

“SENTENCE first – VERDICT afterwards,” said the Queen. “Nonsense!” said Alice loudly. “Off with her head!” the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. – Alice In Wonderland

They say Lewis Carroll was a serious dope fiend, his mind totally scrambled on opium, when he concocted “Alice in Wonderland.” A place where the sentence comes first and the verdict afterward? Where people who protest the madness are sentenced to death themselves ?

Such a place rolled out the red carpet for Benicio del Toro this past weekend. I refer to Havana Cuba which put on the Havana Film Festival where the 4 ½ hour movie “Che,” was the main feature. In May del Toro won the Cannes Film Festiva’l’s “best actor” award for his role as Che Guevara in the movie he co-produced and Steven Soderbergh directed.

While accepting the “best actor” award at Cannes Benicio del Toro gushed: “I’d like to dedicate this to the man himself, Che Guevara!” as the crowd erupted in a thunderous ovation."I wouldn’t be here without Che Guevara, and through all the awards the movie gets you’ll have to pay your respects to the man!”

In a flurry of subsequent interviews in Europe del Toro equated Che Guevara with Jesus Christ and told a Spanish interviewer, “Ideologically I feel very close to Che.”

[razorback-bert]

Be my guest.

[mkjessup]

[Che Guevara],,,was one of the 20th Century’s Great Unhanged Villains. He met a suitably sticky demise, but perhaps they should have made it slightly stickier. Machine-gunning him was a kindness he could have been spared

Well Che ought to count his blessings (assuming he's in a place where he can), that he didn't check out like one of his ideological ancestors, the infamous Leon Trotsky:
Last photo of Trotsky, after an ice pick to the head on orders of Uncle Joe Stalin himself in 1940.

[DuncanWaring]

ok ... I give up - who’s “Mr. Pierrepont”?

[DieHard the Hunter]

> ok ... I give up - who’s “Mr. Pierrepont”?

Albert Pierrepont. Famous British hangman. Amongst many others, he hanged over eighty Nazis as a result of the Nurnberg trials after WW-II.

When he wasn’t hanging people, he was a publican. IIRC he one day had the dubious pleasure of hanging one of his regulars.

[DuncanWaring]

I’m enlightened.