Based on the Books by Ernesto "Che" Guevara
Part One: The Argentine - 7.9
Written by Peter Buchman
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
If it wasn't so ironic, it would be funny, but the fact that Che's face is now used to sell more t-shirts than Nike is in fact one of the saddest reflections of American consumer society at large. How exactly does a guerrilla fighter from Argentina, that led the Cuban Revolution, end up becoming a pop culture brand? I suppose the same way his life story becomes a meandering, unfocused film starring one of the most important actors of our generation, and a largely unknown supporting cast. Throw into the mix the high budget (for an art film) and the stuttered, buried art house theatrical release, and you have a real mess of a movie. So how did this happen? Simple. Revisionist history.
We live in a time where history is written by those in power, and it is written how they choose to remember it. Ernesto "Che" Guevara (Benicio Del Toro) is an Argentinian doctor, Marxist, humanitarian, free thinker, artist, and most famously, a revolutionary. His actions, works that were solely motivated by his truest beliefs, speak louder than any of his words, and his words were some that have changed the world over the past 53 years since Che met Fidel Castro (Demien Bichir, TV's Weeds). On that night, the two men met, and began to seriously discuss what would entail a complete revolution in Cuba.
Fidel, a great leader of men, proud Cuban, and strategic genius, comes to Mexico to explain to Che how he sees the revolution happening. They make preliminary plans of how they would go about such a daunting task, but before you know it, they are on a boat from Mexico headed toward Cuba, with 82 fighters ready to take on the entire army and regime of American-supported dictator Fulgencio Batista.
In a story that is as harrowing as it is heroic and amazing, these men slowly made their way across the entire island of Cuba, traveling hundreds of miles on foot, over the course of two years, fighting and winning along the way, building the support of the populace.
However, even though this film is about Che and the Cuban revolution, really, it's not about either of those things. It's about man's nature, his will to overcome anything given the proper circumstances, and on what occasions men will rise to these challenges. Much of the film is spent watching Che and other fighters wearily meeting new recruits and citizens who pledge support. The only trouble is, Che is unsure of who to trust, therefore the viewer has no clue who he is actually trusting, and since there is no attempt to individualize anyone but a handful of main characters, the viewer spends a lot of time living day to day life with Che and the guerrillas.
I understand this was the point Soderbergh was making, it's a film about the ideas of the men, the accomplishment of these ideas, and all the circumstances that, added up, equaled the Cuban revolution. However, the structure of the narrative, the style of camerawork, the editing choices, and the plot points leave any fan of history wondering why he chose to make this film. He's the director, so ultimately it is his choice, but personally, this is not the film about Che I would like to see. I would like to see why he steadfastly believes what he believes, not how readily he is to fight for those beliefs. In fact, pieces of each would have worked better than one or the other, but I suppose that would have made this a mainstream biopic, and I just keep getting the feeling that very genre is what Soderbergh (for some reason) was purposely dodging.
Well, we all know our history. In 1958 Castro finally took Havana, Batista was overthrown, and in one of the few underdog military victories in the history of humanity, (remember, the Spartans were slaughtered at Thermopylae) they took the country of Cuba back from an imposed regime. What is unique about this story is the fact that they didn't start with full support, they built it along the way, traveling across the country, showing the peasants they felt their plight, they were living it, and if only the peasants could help them, they were fighting to make their lives better.
With ingenuous attack points, strong organization, the populist support, and unique guerrilla tactics, Castro, Guevara, and their communist supporters were able to take the country back. However, this film does not expound these points, they seem to be a smaller part of a big picture. The problem is, the big picture is never quite clear. I believe this theme was intentionally left open-ended for the viewer just to explore the lives and times at hand, but realistically, there are so many disjointed scenes that a viewer uninitiated with the story will be lost when confronted with the realism of such a revolution because of the nature of the narrative.
The cinematography is excellent, but the lackadaisical approach to direction of each scene is so wide open that often the viewer can't tell who is talking, where the scene is going, or what important piece of the revolution is being explained. The editing adds to the separation of the scenes, we follow Che as he meets his new recruits, making it a point to pass his commitment to the cause on to them realistically. However, without seeing the actual hardships of many of these characters, or any of the people of Cuba really, the revolution itself comes off looking self-serving, which, given the circumstances, was not really the case. The music is low key and well used, the costumes and locations are all authentic in nature, but without a single line connecting all the dots, the viewer is often left in the dark.
These points are all disappointing in the end, because I felt that the narrative was never connected to the spirit of the film. We come to like Che, his general nature, and his humanitarian spirit, but as a person, I couldn't connect with the characters, although I strongly believe in their ideology.
Part Two: Guerrilla - 7.8
Written by Peter Buchman and Benjamin A. van der Veen
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
This film resumes the story of Che in 1967, 9 years after the successful coupe of Cuba, and Che has left his posts in the Cuban government and quietly disappeared. In an early scene, we see Che, in disguise, giving a final goodbye to Fidel Castro, who understands Che's need to move on. He is a freedom fighter, not a Cuban national, and as much as he is famous in Cuba, and beloved by the Cuban people, this is not his ultimate goal. That would be the unification and freedom of Latin America from the control of outside forces, such as the United States.
Skipping his time in the Congo and moving straight to Bolivia, Che pops up among a band of guerrillas in an effort to organize a Bolivian revolution. This time, however, they don't gain the popularity of the mostly peasant people of Bolivia. This issue is explored, showing why the peasants had no reason to trust these rebels, and why they couldn't understand the ultimate goals of the revolution. Namely, they were uneducated, and easily led by government propaganda, whereas the Cubans were naturally untrustworthy of Batista, who was the dictator at the time.
Again, this film follows Che and the rebels as they move through the country, trying to build support. However, this film is the opposite side of the coin the the Cuban revolution, and I can see why it is the perfect counterpoint to the previous film. Whereas they were successful and beloved in Cuba, they met failure and paranoia in Bolivia.
The same problems persist in this film that flawed the first one: No clear narrative connecting all the plot points, few explanations for what is going on, and what is attempting to be accomplished in each scene. Also, direction lacks focus once again, and in this film it is at times even harder to tell who is supposed to be talking in the scene, the two armies are easily confused throughout the film, and the editing once again focuses too much on scenes that introduce characters and situations that will be soon abandoned for another, with no clear correlation to the scene that preceded it.
Ultimately, the same theme permeates this film as the last, which is Che's undying spirit to fight for what he believes is right, although this time there is no light at the end of the tunnel, the rebels slowly get defeated at every turn, until eventually Che is captured.
The best scene in this part of the film, or the whole film really, are Che's final moments as a prisoner of the Bolivian army. This is the scene where the viewer connects most with the character, after seeing all he's been through, and knowing what will become of him, and the viewer can do nothing but helplessly watch and ponder what could have been done differently to avoid such a fate.
The acting in both films is superb, the mostly unknown foreign cast does a great job of bringing the spirit of the people involved alive on the screen. Del Toro carries both films on his back with a quiet, reserved performance, but the fact is it's too quiet, and too reserved, especially since Che had so many ideologies that I felt were never fully explored. For example, Che is a revolutionary, an accomplished guerrilla fighter, but at the same time he is a doctor, a healer of men, a humanitarian. This dichotomy makes for an interesting portrait of a single man, but because his beliefs and justifications for being both things are never fully explored, we are expected to just accept these facts and move on to the plot. On that note, I have to say I liked Demien Bichir as Fidel Castro, in an uncompromising, realistic portrayal of a very complex man, that even Che didn't fully understand.
As I said before, the problem is there just isn't enough plot. They spend the entire second film running from the Bolivian army, and after a while, the scenes become repetitive, even though they are supposed to be reversed reflections of the same fighting spirit. We see why the Cuban revolution worked, and why the Bolivian revolution failed, but never what impact these facts had on the common people of both countries, or for that matter, anyone beyond the guerrillas themselves, and only slightly Che's family.
My main problem is that in a 4 1/2 hour film, all of these concepts could have been thoroughly explored. Instead, we spend time with characters we barely know, in good scenes, but scenes that have less impact when combined into a single narrative. Too many scenes depict the every day struggle of the rebels. Sure, we would like to see that, but after a few scenes of the same thing, we get the point. They were sick, they were tired, they were hungry, they were ill-equipped, but they still fought like they were the strongest army in the world. Repeated twenty times in each movie, it gets stale, and when a scene does start to seem fresh and new, the film quickly gets bogged down in the same type of scenes.
In reading Che's actual writings, such as Guerrilla Warfare, Che spends a lot of time explaining the psychological underpinnings of a successful revolution, but in the film, he gives the rebels passing encouragement with these tidbits of knowledge, instead of that knowledge being the basis that pulls together the entire narrative. For example, Che explains that having no support with the main populace is not a problem, that support can be built along the way, as shown in the first film. However, in the second film, they only lose support, are given up by traitors, and there is no solid explanation as to the psychological motivation behind the characters committing these acts, which leaves the film feeling hollow, the scenes where they sit in the forest for days a time seemingly empty, devoid of the spirit that permeated the first film without a reasonable explanation as to why. What bugs me most about this is the fact that there is an explanation, an existential one, but an explanation nonetheless.
Without this explanation, or another narrative structure in its place, the films don't add up. In the end, I felt like I knew less about the Che that was introduced in the first film, and more about the people whose support he was trying to win, without exploring their thoughts or feelings. If this were a film about the Bolivian revolution specifically, that would be an understandable oversight. However, this took on more of a biopic structure from the beginning, but never fully lived up to that structure, leaving the overall meaning of the film up in the air. Ambiguity in film is nothing new, and it's even something I typically like when done correctly. Here though, it divides the films in and of themselves, unsure whether it is a biopic on Che, a film about the nature of revolution, the role of citizens in government, or what ends a man will go to in order to accomplish what he believes in, and whether that is right or wrong. It could have deftly combined all of these into one, flowing narrative, but instead I felt it just threw what it could against the wall, and then looked back to see what stuck, and these disjointed moments were all that was left.
Ultimately, not a bad film, it was well made on most levels, but ideologically, it couldn't find any center ground on which to stand and proclaim its purpose. Not every film needs that, but a film about such a well known popular figure should be mostly about that public figure, his actions, and the motivations for those actions. I felt this film didn't do any of those ideas justice, and overall, it was a failure. Benicio is to be commended for his brave portrayal of Che, but the writers must be admonished for not giving him enough of a point of view to stand upon. One thing I must commend Soderbergh on was his deft use of pacing, because this definitely did not feel like a nearly 5 hour film. With that said, what is in here could have easily been a 3 hour film, and the remaining 90 minutes could have focused more on the man, the ideas presented, and what these revolutions mean to the world at large today, which I believe is a great deal, especially during wartime.
Overall - 7.8/10
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