![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/f6/1d/001f1df6_medium.jpeg)
Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]
![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/f6/1d/001f1df6.jpeg)
Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]
A Film by Steven Soderbergh
2xFull BluRay 1:1 | 1080p MPEG-4 AVC @ ~28000 Kbps | 02:14:28 + 02:15:22 | 46,23 Gb + 47,73 Gb
Audio: Spanish DTS-HD MA 5.1 + English Commentary track | Subtitles: English
–––––––––––––––
3xDVD9 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC 16:9 | 02:14:18 + 02:15:14 | 6,84 Gb + 7,65 Gb + 7,45 Gb
Audio: Spanish AC3 5.1 @ 448 Kbps + English Commentary track | Subtitles: English
Genre: Biography, Drama, History | 4 wins | Spain, France, USA
A Film by Steven Soderbergh
2xFull BluRay 1:1 | 1080p MPEG-4 AVC @ ~28000 Kbps | 02:14:28 + 02:15:22 | 46,23 Gb + 47,73 Gb
Audio: Spanish DTS-HD MA 5.1 + English Commentary track | Subtitles: English
–––––––––––––––
3xDVD9 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC 16:9 | 02:14:18 + 02:15:14 | 6,84 Gb + 7,65 Gb + 7,45 Gb
Audio: Spanish AC3 5.1 @ 448 Kbps + English Commentary track | Subtitles: English
Genre: Biography, Drama, History | 4 wins | Spain, France, USA
Far from a conventional biopic, Steven Soderbergh’s film about Che Guevara is a fascinating exploration of the revolutionary as icon. Daring in its refusal to make the socialist leader into an easy martyr or hero, Che paints a vivid, naturalistic portrait of the man himself (Benicio del Toro, in a stunning, Cannes-award-winning performance), from his overthrow of the Batista dictatorship to his 1964 United Nations trip to the end of his short life. Composed of two parts, the first a kaleidoscopic view of the Cuban Revolution and the second an all-action dramatization of Che’s failed campaign in Bolivia, Che is Soderbergh’s most epic vision.
Che: Part One - The Argentina - IMDB
Che: Part Two - Che: Guerrilla - IMDB
Criterion
DVDBeaver
Note! First six screenshots are made from BluRay; next five are from DVD.
All screenshots are enlargeable!
All screenshots are enlargeable!
Ernesto Guevara (Benicio Del Toro) is filthy, his hair matted, his beard unkempt. Wounded and weak from loss of blood, he looks pale. His Bolivian captor appears cocky but also surprised: he and his men have charge of the most famous self-proclaimed revolutionary of his time, the inspiring leader of a guerrilla band who has been attacking the Bolivian army for months. Now, assessing his prize, the captain makes a pronouncement both mundane and astute: “A lot of people will want a photograph of you.”![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/32/1e/001f1e32_medium.jpeg)
Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]
![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]]()
It’s 1967, and Che is about to be executed. As he is imagined near the end of Che, he is self-aware and gallant, defiant but also troubled. After a brief effort to persuade one young guard to untie him, he seems resigned to his fate: “Shoot him below the neck,” orders the captain, presumably to preserve the iconic face for photos, proof of life and death, and to be able to deny the execution itself: Che, the official story goes, died of combat injuries sustained in the hills near La Higuera. Steven Soderbergh’s massive accounting of Guevara’s career as a revolutionary doesn’t mention suspicions that the U.S., in particular the CIA, had anything to do with the decision to execute Che, though it does indicate that Bolivian President René Barrientos (Joaquim de Almeida) was working with U.S. supervisors to train his own special forces. As this work is modeled after “similar operations in Vietnam,” as one U.S representative puts it, the film makes clear enough its insidious nature.![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/34/1e/001f1e34_medium.jpeg)
Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]
![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]]()
In its version of Che’s death, the movie also makes clear its reverence for the man and legend, despite his errors and its exploitations. Following a shot of his corpse carried on a stretcher, the film cuts to an earlier image, Che on a boat en route from Mexico to Cuba, where he spends the first half of this four-hour-plus epic, helping Fidel Castro (Demián Bichir) and his brother Raul (Rodrigo Santoro) to overthrow General Fulgencio Batista. The boat’s lively blue wake behind him, Che looks in this frame to be full of hope and energy, his expression thoughtful and figure youthful, much like the most famous photographs of him—disseminated so widely and for so many years after his death.![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/36/1e/001f1e36_medium.jpeg)
Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]
![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]]()
In an abstract sense, the film is about the dissemination of Che Guevara the icon, as it is also the saga of Che refashioned. Each half is based on a book by Guevara (Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War and The Bolivian Diary), but neither takes a single perspective or tells one story. Taken apart, the halves suggest a conventional narrative split (say, rise and fall, promise and failure), but together they form a beguiling sort of disorder. Shot by Soderbergh (under his cinematographer’s alias, “Peter Andrews”), the film’s imagery is precisely meaningful: handheld and raucous for battles, observational during political discussions; framed by mirrors, windows and doorways; black-and-white and archivalish as he speaks before the United Nations in 1964; distractingly close—on his beard, on his cigar—when he’s interviewed by journalist Lisa Howard (Julia Ormond).![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/33/1e/001f1e33_medium.jpeg)
Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]
![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]]()
His answers to her questions provide a glimpse of his social and political thinking, and especially the ideals that will be only partly realized. “Men with the desire to fight,” he explains, “who also understand why they are fighting regardless of who they are fighting, whether under the command of military geniuses or those of normal intelligence, fighting with clubs or with machine guns that fire 30 rounds a minute, these men will put themselves in the most advantageous conditions for fighting and they will triumph.” In Cuba, the struggle is deemed successful; in Bolivia, ambition outstrips pragmatism. “I need peasants,” he tells a comrade, but he is unable to win over the locals to fight for what he sees as their own “freedom.”![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/37/1e/001f1e37_medium.jpeg)
Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]
![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]]()
This incomprehension is a function, the film suggests, of multiple forces, from government propaganda to undisciplined fighters to Che’s own distance from the people he means to help. Though he appears repeatedly as a doctor—treating infections and injuries, checking children’s mouths and eyes—he is more often crouched in brush or leaning against trees (gasping from his chronic asthma), endeavoring to lead his rebels into a future they can’t see as well as he does.![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/35/1e/001f1e35_medium.jpeg)
Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]
![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]]()
The film cuts back and forth in time, suggesting the many fragments that comprise Guevara’s story, as well as the impossibility of arranging them into a linear chronology. As he and Fidel put together the Cuban campaign, he is repeatedly referred to as “Argentino,” the foreigner, thinker, and medical doctor who pledges himself to the revolutionary cause. This first half of the film, which ends more or less in 1959, when Batista falls, includes as well his visit to New York, his exhortations against American imperialism (which “has led people to believe that peaceful coexistence is the exclusive right of the worlds most powerful nations”), his understanding of commercial promotion for a cause like his (asked whether he wants makeup for the interview, he says no, then changes his mind: “Maybe a little powder”).![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/41/1e/001f1e41_medium.jpeg)
Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]
![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]]()
This vision of himself—as advocate and product—is of a piece with Fidel’s self-image (as military leader, as director of men and systems), but it is also true to Che’s complicated legacy. The movie acknowledges his personal passions, especially in his political pronouncements, and also in his briefly noted romances with wife and fellow guerrilla Aleida (Catalina Sandino Moreno), with whom he has five children, mostly off-screen, and with the less easily delineated comrade Tania (Franka Potente), but it doesn’t do much to parse his personal demons, his conflicts and desires, his relationships beyond their surfaces.![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/42/1e/001f1e42_medium.jpeg)
Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]
![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]]()
At once an historical figure and emblem, he resists reduction. As a sign of the guerrilla fighter as filmmaker (see: Amy Taubin’s much-quoted Film Comment piece), this Che struggles against history and time, expectations and projections, his own body and his own myth. Ever aware of his own small place in the stories he helps to forge, he is at once egotistical and humble. As he advises a young acolyte, “Little boy, no one is so necessary or indispensable in this life. Don’t go thinking that you are indispensable.” As his image looms, he remains aptly cryptic.
![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/32/1e/001f1e32.jpeg)
![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/34/1e/001f1e34.jpeg)
![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/36/1e/001f1e36.jpeg)
![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/33/1e/001f1e33.jpeg)
![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/37/1e/001f1e37.jpeg)
![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/35/1e/001f1e35.jpeg)
![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/41/1e/001f1e41.jpeg)
![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/42/1e/001f1e42.jpeg)
![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/44/1e/001f1e44_medium.jpeg)
Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]
![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/44/1e/001f1e44.jpeg)
Che is not for everyone. It's very long. And for all the action that it does have, this is mostly a character-driven historical drama that is rather quiet and contemplative. I was invigorated by this thoughtful, serious look at a complex historical figure. The performances, particularly by del Toro, are remarkable. As a film, Che will very likely grow in stature in future years. Its deep engagement with the past represents an intellectual commitment filmmakers rarely make, and its seamless technique is nothing short of masterly. Taken together with the outstanding package of extras, Che merits a first from me: a place in the DVD Talk Collectors Series.
![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/43/1e/001f1e43_medium.jpeg)
Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]
![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/43/1e/001f1e43.jpeg)
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION:
- High-definition digital masters, supervised and approved by director Steven Soderbergh, with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
- New audio commentaries featuring Jon Lee Anderson, author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life
- Booklet
BluRay Part One contains:
- Making “Che,” (49:49) a new documentary featuring Soderbergh, producer Laura Bickford, actor-producer Benicio del Toro, and writers Peter Buchman and Ben van der Veen is an excellent, candid behind-the-scenes documentary that reveals the production to have been extraordinarily trying
- Deleted Scenes (15:32)
- Theatrical Trailer (2:32)
BluRay Part Two contains:
- End of a Revolution (25:52) is an indispensable 1968 documentary by Brian Moser who went looking for Guevara in Bolivia. Unfortunately, Che was killed just before Moser's arrival, but Moser found the site of his execution and the resulting film is stunning.
- Deleted Scenes (05:26)
- Interviews from Cuba contains two segments, Participants (23:07) and Historians (11:54) who offer their perspectives on Che himself and the Cuban Revolution. These interviews were conducted by the film's producers, Laura Bickford and Benicio del Toro, and provide some very interesting background and personal recollections.
- Che and the Digital Cinema Revolution! (33:19) focuses on the Red camera and the potential for speed and reduction in costs allowed by the digital format.
All of these extras included on DVD disc 3.
![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/45/1e/001f1e45_medium.jpeg)
Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]
![Che (2008) [The Criterion Collection #496]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/45/1e/001f1e45.jpeg)
DISC INFO:
Disc Title: CHE
Disc Size: 48,163,642,998 bytes
Protection: AACS
BD-Java: Yes
BDInfo: 0.5.6
PLAYLIST REPORT:
Name: 00001.MPLS
Length: 2:14:28 (h:m:s)
Size: 37,981,077,504 bytes
Total Bitrate: 37.66 Mbps
VIDEO:
Codec Bitrate Description
––- –––- –––––-
MPEG-4 AVC Video 27997 kbps 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
AUDIO:
Codec Language Bitrate Description
––- –––– –––- –––––-
DTS-HD Master Audio English 3629 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 3629 kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 24-bit)
DTS-HD Master Audio Spanish 3631 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 3631 kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 24-bit)
Dolby Digital Audio English 192 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 192 kbps / Dolby Surround
SUBTITLES:
Codec Language Bitrate Description
––- –––– –––- –––––-
Presentation Graphics English 38.473 kbps
Presentation Graphics English 34.833 kbps
FILES:
Name Time In Length Size Total Bitrate
–– –––- ––– –– ––––––-
00262.M2TS 0:00:00.000 2:14:28.101 37,981,077,504 37,660
DISC INFO:
Disc Title: CHE
Disc Size: 49,725,241,547 bytes
Protection: AACS
BD-Java: Yes
BDInfo: 0.5.6
PLAYLIST REPORT:
Name: 00001.MPLS
Length: 2:15:22 (h:m:s)
Size: 35,036,418,048 bytes
Total Bitrate: 34.51 Mbps
VIDEO:
Codec Bitrate Description
––- –––- –––––-
MPEG-4 AVC Video 28992 kbps 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
AUDIO:
Codec Language Bitrate Description
––- –––– –––- –––––-
DTS-HD Master Audio Spanish 3516 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 3516 kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 24-bit)
Dolby Digital Audio English 192 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 192 kbps
SUBTITLES:
Codec Language Bitrate Description
––- –––– –––- –––––-
Presentation Graphics English 30.259 kbps
FILES:
Name Time In Length Size Total Bitrate
–– –––- ––– –– ––––––-
00262.M2TS 0:00:00.000 2:15:22.739 35,036,418,048 34,507
All Credits to davev205.
No More Mirrors.