No doubt it will be back to the drawing board for
Steven Soderbergh's intricately ambitious, defiantly non-dramatic 'Che.'
No doubt it will be back to the drawing board for
“Che,” Steven Soderbergh’s intricately ambitious, defiantly nondramatic
four-hour, 18-minute presentation of scenes from the life of revolutionary icon
Che Guevara. If the director has gone out of his way to avoid the usual
Hollywood biopic conventions, he has also withheld any suggestion of why the
charismatic doctor, fighter, diplomat, diarist and intellectual theorist became
and remains such a legendary figure; if anything, Che seems diminished by the way
he’s portrayed here. Originally announced as two separate films, “The
Argentine” and “Guerrilla,” to be released separately, the film was shown as
one picture, with intermission, under the title “Che” (although neither this
nor any other credits appeared onscreen) in its world premiere at the Cannes
Film Festival. Neither half feels remotely like a satisfying stand-alone film,
while the whole offers far too many aggravations for its paltry rewards. Scattered partisans are likely to step forward, but the pic
in its current form is a commercial impossibility, except on television or DVD.
Over the years, Soderbergh has occasionally displayed
a disregard for audience expectations in films such as “Full Frontal,”
“Solaris” and “The Good German,” and presumably makes the “Ocean’s” films in
order to earn the opportunity to undertake such projects. But “Che” is too big
a roll of the dice to pass off as an experiment, as it’s got to meet high
standards both commercially and artistically. The demanding running time also
forces comparison to such rare works as “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Reds” and other
biohistorical epics. Unfortunately, “Che” doesn’t feel epic — just long.
For all its length, however, the mostly
Spanish-language film provides a far from fulsome portrait of a complex man
whose face still adorns T-shirts, campus dorm rooms and Mike Tyson’s body, but
who is also scorned by many.
Part one begins intriguingly with a flurry of
time-jumps showing Ernesto Guevara at different times and places: Meeting Fidel
Castro for the first time in Mexico in 1955, in Havana and at the United
Nations in 1964, onboard a ship in 1956 heading to Cuba with Castro and 80
other revolutionaries who formed the core of their movement, and suffering from
asthma in the jungle the following year. Intro’s snippets of assorted
information and events suggest an overall kaleidoscopic approach that, if
pulled off, could conceivably provide a completed jigsaw puzzle by the end.
Card-shuffling technique employed by Soderbergh and
scenarist Peter Buchman also lays in a lot of political background and dogma
via interview and voiceover. A revolutionary, Guevara says early on, “goes
where he’s needed,” which in the case of this well-educated, well-traveled
Argentinean, means to foreign climes to hasten the spread of Marxism-Leninism.
It can’t necessarily be said
that the film takes its protagonist’s point-of-view or reps an endorsement of
his positions — Soderbergh remains too far outside his subject for that — but
it does give such ample airing to communist ideological thinking — and presents
American and Latin American authorities so exclusively as cardboard mouthpieces
of imperialism and abusive dictatorships, respectively — that some conservative
political commentators might work themselves into a lather over it. However,
so few people will likely see the picture, at least in its current state, that
there’s little chance it will have much cultural impact other than by the fact
of its very existence.
In a patchwork manner, the film portrays with
reasonable clarity the way in which a few dozen men fought their way across
Cuba from east to west, gathering more recruits and winning the help of locals
as they went in their determined effort to overthrow the corrupt, U.S. and
Mafia-backed president, Gen. Fulgencio Batista. Lots of attention is paid to
military strategy and procedure while Guevara, who enjoys Castro’s trust, is
promoted to commandant, and, after being temporarily sidelined, begins to
distinguish himself in battle and eventually leads his men into a key fight at
Santa Clara, paving the way for the final push into Havana.
Oddly, “Che” seems more about denial of audience
expectations and pleasure than it does about providing the intellectual and
historical heft that would serve as a good alternative. Soderbergh withholds
much in addition to dramatic modulation, narrative thrust and psychological
insight: A feeling of revolutionary zeal, the literal transformation of Ernesto
into Che, his marriages and family life, the depiction of the entry into Havana,
Che’s oversight of many executions after victory, the Cuban missile crisis and
Che’s wish that nuclear missiles be immediately fired at the U.S., his mounting
distaste for Russians, his obsessive diary writing, his “lost year” as a failed
revolutionary sparkplug in Africa before heading for his fatal misadventure in
Bolivia, and even the famous photograph.
Instead, part one increasingly comes to sag under the
stress placed on a less-than-disciplined editing strategy, and the
chronologically straightforward part two, which chronicles the Bolivian
disaster, has all the excitement of a military training docu; section is
earmarked by the passage of days in the campaign, ending with Day 341, which is
how long it feels.
A good portion of part one sketches in Che’s visit to
enemy territory, New York City, to address the U.N., an effective sequence,
presented in newsreel-style black-and-white, that appears to actually have been
filmed at the headquarters building. While there, he also gives interviews and
attends an upscale party where he thanks Sen. Eugene McCarthy for the Bay of
Pigs invasion, because it brought so much support to the revolution.
As to Castro’s movement
itself, Soderbergh delineates its slow progression from an outwardly democratic
structure — decisions over punishments, including execution for infractions,
are decided after general discussion and votes — to a more autocratic system.
The many scenes involving the implementation of military discipline,
hierarchical rank and decisionmaking hold a certain interest, but they aren’t
charged with the sort of urgency or world-changing import they arguably
deserve.
Nor does Che himself come off as the sort of dynamic,
energetic leader that history suggests he was. Benicio Del Toro is physically
an amazing match to the real thing, and he’s an outstanding actor in the
bargain. Much of the time, however, he’s shown in some
sort of repose, thinking, leaning back, talking in a mild way, part of a group.
In line with the film’s overall antidramatic approach, this Che is not allowed
to be much of an action hero, and the battles he leads are depicted in a
clinical way, without tension or suspense. Overall, Del Toro’s performance,
while entirely credible, is surprisingly recessive, especially in part two,
where Che at times becomes a secondary character.
North American and European audiences won’t pay the
issue much notice, but it will be interesting to see how Central and South
American viewers react to the odd stew of Spanish accents the actors serve up.
Although Che Guevara was from Argentina, Del Toro speaks a sort of neutral but
Caribbean-inflected Spanish. Portuguese thesp Joaquim
de Almeida sports a Portuguese accent as Bolivian president Barrientos, while
many of Che’s Cuban comrades speak with blatantly Mexican accents. Catalina
Sandino Moreno retains her native Colombian accent as the Cuban woman who will
become Che’s second wife. Castro, played quite persuasively by Mexican thesp
Demian Bichir, looks, sounds and gesticulates very like the man himself. [Complaint
relaied toFincher bySoderbergh].
Part one is impressively shot with crystalline
clarity in [2.35], while part two downsizes to the 1.85 aspect ratio to tell
the theoretically more intimate story of Che’s decline and fall. Direct effect
of this aesthetic decision, however, is to make part two look puny in
comparison with the first. Soderbergh, who as usual lensed under the nom de
camera of Peter Andrews, used the new RED digital camera, and the result is
highly promising.
Having cast off his various top administrative
positions, and even his citizenship, in Cuba, Che made the decision, in late
1966, to try to ignite the flame of revolution in South America, beginning in
the central country of Bolivia with the intention of moving rebellion outward
toward neighboring countries. Everything worked against him; the mountains and
climate were inhospitable, uneducated peasants distrusted foreigners, the local
communist party withdrew its support, the watchful local authorities enjoyed
the assistance of U.S. equipment and advisers and, despite Che’s having arrived
anonymously and in disguise, rumors soon spread that he was in the country.
Che’s final hours, and his exchanges with various of
his captors, hold a certain poignancy, but the
resonance and implications of his murder are lacking; the possible American
hand behind the decision to kill him isn’t even suggested.
Most secondary characters make impressions due to
their physical traits (beard style, notable hat, glasses, complexion, et al.)
rather than through developed characterizations. Individual psychology is
denied everyone, which is at odds with the one way part two could possibly gain
some impact through revision; that is, to overlay it with commentary from Che’s
“Bolivian Diary,” which served as the inspiration for the section. Alberto
Iglesias’ score comes and goes in abrupt fashion, sometimes to oddly
melodramatic effect.
It would be surprising if this Cannes version, which
was reportedly rushed to completion to meet its playdate, even sees the light
of day again except perhaps on a multidisc DVD. By any normal standards,
retailoring, presumably down to manageable length as a single film, is called
for to allow “Che” any significant public life.
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