"Che" (2008)

(Some thoughts upon watching the 1st & 2nd parts of the film on its traveling 'roadshow')
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There appears to be the implicit understanding that after the effort and achievement of The Motorcycle Diaries, the myth-character of Ernesto Guevara would be expanded upon in the next Che project; part of the charm of The Motorcycle Diaries is that it presents a prelude to the eventual mythos that would environ its principal character in an epic scheme that went well beyond his nationality - The Motorcycle Diaries was thus at liberty to engage with its character in an intimate manner that alluded to presentiments of great ideas and actions, without having to orchestrate - cinematically speaking - the massive mobilizations that a leonine figure like Guevara would in his maturity coordinate. The Motorcycle Diaries is the prequel to the epic life, its resignation to depict the quiet achievements of a humane contemplative nature (for instance Guevara and his friend's willingness to assist at a leper colony, its meek magnanimity in great contrast to the larger-scale & much louder guerrilla warfare that would later compel the world's attention) highlights the essential humility that drove Guevara to sacrifice his promising life's ambitions for an ancient dream: Bolivar's dream, the dream of washing away the stain of nationalism and the imperialist arbitration of borders that had been left behind by centuries of colonialism - the dream of an indivisible union of the Americas in a mutual independence & solidarity - in Rubén Darío's words: "la Unión latina."

The presumption about the next Che film was that it would uncover, beyond the scope of The Motorcycle Diaries, the more astringent nature in Guevara's rationale for revolution by any means necessary. The Motorcycle Diaries restricted itself to those episodes that Guevara, a man aware of his literary dimension, narrated in the diaries of the same name. According to its filmmakers Che would also derive from the spirit and substance of the two works that Guevara wrote later in his life: Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War and the Bolivian diaries he wrote during his last fateful campaign. Taking these two into account as the two sides that reveal Guevara's victory and failure, the film took the form of a diptych which increased in length (one would imagine) the more studiously the filmmakers adapted the literature to cinematics. Guevara's meticulous attention to the details & practice of the revolutionary medium insisted on an accuracy of cinematic capture in proportion with its hero's primarily dogmatic nature and intense assiduity. His 'character' came to represent a practiced singlemindedness, a piety which only a visionary would have, that would efface any trace of the foibles and common weaknesses that a man of less backbone would carry. Where critics and moviegoers were expecting to find the inner (emotional) core of an intriguing but thoroughly mysterious historical personage, they were instead provided with the painstaking and often exhausting delineation of a life lived in complete devotion to an ideal and universal justice.

The common complaint about Che is precisely that it seems to reveal nothing about its hero; there is a kind of outrage that after 4 and a half hours of toil through the jungles and plains with our psychological quarry, we (seemingly) learn hardly anything about what drives him, what motivates him, what stirs the inner chords of his being. But this 'outrage' (more of a boredom) exists for those alone who seek to tear down the statue from its pedestal, for those who wish to understand a human being by exposing all his vulnerabilites. If Guevara had any vulnerabilities (aside from his chronic asthma), his most conspicuous was his nearly blind belief in social revolution as the primary means of justice; that is to say, his vulnerability as a staunch believer in the desire of others to seek justice. If none were as remarkable as him in his fierce will toward a truly egalitarian society, it was his inability to perceive this pervasive doubt & fear in others that caused his death at the hands of those he tried to help.

The 2 films as such are formidable successes in the one idea: to depict Guevara as he only allowed himself to be seen - as a man who lives as if he had already perished, whose cause is the cause of the voiceless and the victimized unseen, whose body is scattered across the Americas and whose name, Che, signals everyman he came across. Guevara comes across as the iconic photo that has forevermore etched its singularity into the historical collective consciousness: he is no more a man than a symbol is: he is an idea lived out to its full potential, a will so in tune with its spiritual engine that it can only utter two words, as in the form of an epitaph on the regal headstone of his head, as its testament: "Patria, o muerte."

It has already been established that the two films work as mirrors of each other: the first, titled The Argentine (or, Che Part One), is the more spirited and dynamic of the two. Soderbergh takes to his old stock of performing quick reversals, flashbacks, and interchanges between periods of Guevara's early life as a revolutionary. We witness Che giving interviews, attending parties, and delivering a speech at a UN summit - this is Che as the humble but determined celebrity on the world scene. We also briefly catch the young Ernesto Guevara in Mexico City fatefully meeting with the Castro brothers, and persuaded to join them in carrying out a coup d'etat in Cuba; also scenes of asthmatic Guevara unused to carrying out orders as el Comandante, but who gradually, at the instigation of Fidel Castro, becomes more assured of himself and his knowledge as a revolutionary leader, despite his reluctance to command natives while perceiving himself as a foreigner, "the Argentine." Finally we see him come into full command of skills as a leader of troops with equipoise & foresight, and the final victory at Santa Clara that sealed Fidel Castro's takeover of Cuba. The mechanics and editing of this first film have great semblance to the mechanics at work in Soderbergh's Traffic: the interplay and vivacity of the scenes as they comment on one other (the three time narratives intercutting to great effect) drive the first part toward a gracious and ultimately satisfying end result for the characters. The final battle of Santa Clara is among Soderbergh's best achievements: the drawnout intensity of the battle in the city has a realism quite unlike the more exaggerated forms of warfare found in other films. The victory is earned through patience & perseverance, Che's two constant virtues, and Guevara looms large by the end of the film, having come a long way from a beardless young man in Mexico to a bearded and brave general in Cuba. Notably, there are extensive quotations from Guevara's Reminscences used in the film to highlight certain aspects of revolutionary warfare and also the specific plight of the cuban campaign.

The second film, titled Guerilla, or Che Part Two, is nearly the same length as the first and also ends with an intense battle sequence, along with coda. In keeping with the diptych model, the second film presents the same material in a perfectly opposite characterization. Where the first film presents the Cuban Revolutionary War (with Reminiscences as the source material - a revolutionary handbook for success) as a model for victory that was emphatically brought into fruition by the effort and solidarity of the campesinos, the second film presents the day-to-day struggle of the same campaign on different soil, sourced from the hindsight-less diary entries Guevara wrote in Bolivia, as a model of unforeseen failure, this time brought about by the same perpetrators of success in the Cuban revolution: the campesinos again. Whereas the first film is multidimensional and dynamic, the second goes along at a strictly linear pace & chronology: the days that number Guevara's life are bleakly enumerated with each scene in the campaign, and the heavy lifesapping monotony of the revolutionary cause begins to wear down the audience along with the soldiers who gradually become disillusioned with the Comandante's dream. The final battle scene is equally intense, but since it ends with Guevara's capture and death, its deathnote rings out sharply in forlornness. Even the cinematography and color schemes are different for both films: in the first, a warm palette of vibrant greens and yellows are used, but in the second, the color palette is much more muted and grainy, with a colder wash of dim greens and blues used to provoke a sense of foreboding (much of this acknowledged by Soderbergh.)

What does not change in both films is the man himself, Ernesto Guevara, whose mission of liberation in both films remains exactly the same - to free the ignorant & downtrodden by educating them to free themselves - and whose unflagging devotion and steadiness to the cause never diminshes. His dream of a unified latinamerica, one without need for the imposed idealogical nationalism of borders or for the vapid differentiation of Argentines from Cubans or Cubans from Bolivians, survives the great length of the film, and one comes away much like those who knew him come away, in thorough awe at the persistence of vocation in so self-effacing a personality. Soderbergh's determination to film Che with as much technical, nearly documentarian detachment as the Comandante himself used to lead demonstrates the fervor with which it takes to be humane under inhuman circumstances. The film begins and ends as a lasting monument to this necessary detachment from self that brought Che to enact change in a world so tyrannically unjust.

To comment on Benicio del Toro's performance is nearly redundant. As has been correctly told me, del Toro so embodies Che with the right amount of patience, kindness, sternness, regality, and deliberation that a man of that character would have had, that it is useless to claim that del Toro 'performed' well or 'acted' grandly; rather, del Toro is Che, and this project, which had been his special mission to realise for so many years, will reserve forevermore the entirety of his powers as an actor who does not act out its subject but becomes its substance.
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Cf. http://twitchfilm.net/site/view/cheinterview-with-steven-soderbergh/

(Also, any of the epic films that have attempted to describe cinematically the life of Jesus; though it is never [thankfully] alluded to, like Christ on his return to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, Che is celebrated through the streets of Santa Clara after the battle & victory; and like Christ in his final preparation for the Passion, Che is 'crucified' at the hands of disbelievers and Judases who through their skepticism allow for his capture and execution.)