Should be required viewing for any young person who thinks it's cool to wear a Che Guevara t-shirt.
This 60-minute documentary drives home what a driving force Che Guevara was in Castro's revolution. What's more, we're treated to a constant stream of vintage photos and movie footage, starting with his baby and childhood pictures growing up in a privileged family in Argentina, and ending with graphic movies showing his corpse after he was gunned down in Bolivia on October 9, 1967 at the age of 39. There's fantastic footage of a very young Castro leaving prison after his first attempt to oust Batista, and footage of Guevara training Castro's revolutionaries in the field. We see a cigar-chomping Guevara during the revolution, with Castro, with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, and even with Cuban exiles shouting angrily at him as he visits New York City before the U.S. embargo and strained relations. And yes, we see several graphic executions.
Director Clark Green offers a detail- and photo-rich documentary that celebrates Guevara as an idealistic revolutionary whose famous motorcycle trip across Latin America was preceded by a bicycle trip--both of which showed him up close and personal the "capitalist octopuses" that made multinational corporations rich while making the people poor. Enhancing the film is an intelligent and streamlined narrative that smoothly takes us from one stage to the next, relying heavily on entries from Guevara's own journal that are read as voiceovers.
When I was in Cuba, Guevara's face was everywhere, and like George Washington's in America, it was always the same pose. The largest was the grand mural on the side of a building by Revolutionary Square, and the smallest was that one peso coin. In between, you saw that photo on smaller signs and buildings, and when you left Havana you saw it at the airport on postcards, t-shirts and key chains. This film shows us many more shots of a man who has come to be the face of revolution, not just in Cuba, but worldwide.
Video:
Presented in 1.33:1 aspect ratio and mostly black and white, "Che Guevara: Hasta la Victoria Siempre" uses so many vintage film clips that you'd have to say the overall quality is as good as those clips. But let's face it. These clips are precious, and some allowance has to be made. They show their age and the crude stock that they were filmed with, but despite the graininess I never felt as if I was watching anything less than a high-quality production.
Audio:
The audio is a complementary Dolby Digital Mono, and there's not much to say about it except it's not overly distorted or scratchy. None of these filmstrips have been painstakingly restored, but the transfer to disc and the narrative voiceover is nothing that draws attention to itself in a negative way.
Extras:
There are no bonus features.
Bottom Line:
As biographies go, this one is so rich in archival footage that you can't help but marvel in almost every sequence. The filmmakers really dug deep to find these audio-visual treasures. "Che Guevara: Hasta la Victoria Siempre" provides a great overview of a life that has inspired millions. It should be required viewing for any young person who thinks it's cool to wear a Che Guevara t-shirt.
Director Clark Green offers a detail- and photo-rich documentary that celebrates Guevara as an idealistic revolutionary whose famous motorcycle trip across Latin America was preceded by a bicycle trip--both of which showed him up close and personal the "capitalist octopuses" that made multinational corporations rich while making the people poor. Enhancing the film is an intelligent and streamlined narrative that smoothly takes us from one stage to the next, relying heavily on entries from Guevara's own journal that are read as voiceovers.
When I was in Cuba, Guevara's face was everywhere, and like George Washington's in America, it was always the same pose. The largest was the grand mural on the side of a building by Revolutionary Square, and the smallest was that one peso coin. In between, you saw that photo on smaller signs and buildings, and when you left Havana you saw it at the airport on postcards, t-shirts and key chains. This film shows us many more shots of a man who has come to be the face of revolution, not just in Cuba, but worldwide.
Video:
Presented in 1.33:1 aspect ratio and mostly black and white, "Che Guevara: Hasta la Victoria Siempre" uses so many vintage film clips that you'd have to say the overall quality is as good as those clips. But let's face it. These clips are precious, and some allowance has to be made. They show their age and the crude stock that they were filmed with, but despite the graininess I never felt as if I was watching anything less than a high-quality production.
Audio:
The audio is a complementary Dolby Digital Mono, and there's not much to say about it except it's not overly distorted or scratchy. None of these filmstrips have been painstakingly restored, but the transfer to disc and the narrative voiceover is nothing that draws attention to itself in a negative way.
Extras:
There are no bonus features.
Bottom Line:
As biographies go, this one is so rich in archival footage that you can't help but marvel in almost every sequence. The filmmakers really dug deep to find these audio-visual treasures. "Che Guevara: Hasta la Victoria Siempre" provides a great overview of a life that has inspired millions. It should be required viewing for any young person who thinks it's cool to wear a Che Guevara t-shirt.
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