As if threatened with exile from high road moviemaking after the “Ocean’s” Trilogy fiasco, director Steven Soderbergh, with such urgency, made “Che” (2008) and “The Informant” (2009)—two very solid high roads. “Che,” recently released on DVD, is not only the more mature work of the two, but is the best in the Soderbergh corpus. If that doesn’t entice, then perhaps the film’s subject will.
Che is of course Ernesto Guevara—physician, revolutionary, guerrilla, and the emblem of rebellion. He led an extraordinary life. He saw the kind of adventure that would raise Don Quixote’s brow. He tasted triumph, and its aftertaste of defeat. He stood up to the U.S. at the height of its power. Given that, the paucity of films about him is remarkable. Yet it's believable due to the degree of difficulty it takes to undress the man of the myth. Hitherto, the only good movie we have of Che is “Motorcycle Diaries.” Now we also have Soderbergh’s.
“Che” weighs about five hours and is divided into two parts. Part One runs on wishful thinking uttered in the film’s opening sequence: “What did Batista do? He led a coup and took power in one day.” I’m hardly giving anything away when I tell you that Part One ends with the capitulation of the Batista Regime by the 26 de Juilio campaign—better known as the Cuban Revolution, the appellation by which the coup rippled around the world.
Indeed, what's of real interest are the events in between namely, the evolution of Che (Benicio del Toro) and his easy transition of exchanging his stethoscope for the hat of Comandante. The action is interrupted by fitful splices—in grainy black and white—of our Rebel as a full blown demigod, donning his guerrilla fatigues and symbolic whiskers on his diplomatic visit to New York in 1964. Part Two fast-forwards to the mid-1960’s in Bolivia, where our hero dies trying to breathe life into a lagging revolution.
Side by side, the two parts come off as thesis and antithesis: coming from the high-voltage solidarity of Part One, we are dispirited by the peripeteia and half-heartedness of the revolution in Part Two. Neither part is driven by a palpable plot. Rather, we have recurring patterns of tribulation, ennui and the occupation of serious purpose—all set in photogenic backdrops (beautifully photographed by Peter Andrews).
Don’t count on Soderbergh’s movie if you wish to get better acquainted with the man beneath the myth. (For that I refer you his scrupulous biography by Jon Lee Anderson, the film’s historical consultant.) In fact, one of best things about the movie is that it doesn’t pause to give its audience a long history lessons. The little tidbits we learn about Che—his bibliophilia, the fire of his convictions, his appeals to Satre and Bertrand Russell for moral support—ought to be enough to titillate the curiosity of anyone with a taste for history and its relationships with Über Men. In Spanish and English.
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