Returned a few hours back after watching the first part of Che, which was released in UK today. You should see it at the first opportunity - and if you can, also set aside some thinking time afterwards.
Yes, the god he followed has failed - the economics everywhere and the politics of it, almost equally so. But the ideal remains. And very few come to mind who pursued it with the purity that Ernesto (Che) Guevara de la Serna brought: not for nothing did Sartre call him "the most complete human being of our age".
In these days, the romanticism of this character seems over the top - this fusion of the self with the revolutionary ideal, giving up all individual materialist aspirations to create a community of collective maximizers, this thinker-soldier-statesman who was at ease in a range of settings - but, as was said of another purist, "Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth".
ps: I do hope Steven Soderbergh and Benicio Del Toro (and Laura Bickford) will be the ones who move Che beyond the T-shirts and memorabilia that Alberto Korda's Guerrillero Heroico spawned.
