oscar jubis
01-25-2009, 05:16 PM
The long gestation period of Steven Soderbergh’s 2-part Che, about the last dozen years in the life of Ernesto Guevara, evinces both the inherent difficulties of the project and the thoughtfulness of the filmmakers’ approach. Apparently, the lessons derived from Che! (1969), a disastrous dramatization of the most significant events in Guevara’s life within a 96-minute film, have not been forgotten. Guevara’s life, albeit short, was too eventful and his character too complex to be satisfyingly captured inside a couple cans of film. All biographical films entail acts of condensation and elision. Che and The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), a film about Guevara produced by Robert Redford, have two virtues in common. Both base their scripts on Guevara’s own writings and limit their content to discrete periods of his life.
The Motorcycle Diaries focuses solely on Guevara’s coming-of-age journey across South America. The narrow parameters resulted in a film that pleased Guevara’s admirers worldwide without having to broach more ambiguous and complex phases of his life. Che was originally conceived as the story of Guevara’s attempt to foment revolution in Bolivia. Terence Malick was hired as director but he left to make The New World, so producer Soderbergh took his place. Eventually, Guevara’s major failure became chapter two of a longer film that first depicts his greatest triumph, the Cuban Revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power. By design, the new film is unconcerned with Guevara’s private life. For instance, we never see his Mexican wife and daughter and Aleida March is regarded almost exclusively within the context of her joining the July 26th movement. Che also eschews attempts to fit the material into narrative formulas or to make it subservient to a message or lesson to be served to the audience.
Part I of Che, titled The Argentine, crosscuts between the Cuban campaign and b&w scenes of his 1964 trip to New York City to address the United Nations. An early scene shows the first meeting between Castro and Guevara over dinner at a private home in Mexico City. Their conversation provides the audience with compelling rationale for violent revolt in order to overthrow the corrupt and unjust Batista regime. Che dwells on the political underpinnings of the revolution and the tactical strategy utilized. The recruitment and training of combatants, the raising of the social consciousness of the peasants, and the execution of military goals are vividly dramatized without succumbing to outwardly emotional appeals. The film is a thorough anatomy of a revolution, a descendant of Gillo Portecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers. To watch The Argentine is a dynamic experience, as the rebels advance inexorably from the Sierra Maestra mountains westwards to Havana. Repeatedly, Soderbergh cuts to scenes of the march to Havana while the soundtrack identified with the 1964 trip to New York is still playing. Guevara’s Face the Nation interview, his U.N. address, and a reading from his memoirs can be heard over pre-1959 visuals. The effect is exhilarating, in that it forces the viewer to consider both periods simultaneously and how each impinges upon the other.
For part II, Soderbergh changes from anamorphic to spherical lenses to create a tighter frame. The color palette is appropriately less varied and the tones subdued. The aspect ratio diminishes along with Guevara’s freedom of movement and the effectiveness of his tactics. The camera still moves in Bolivia but never along tracks or anything that signifies it knows where it’s going. Now it’s mostly handheld and tentative. The action is deeply grounded in the physical realm. Whereas in Cuba the group under Guevara’s command grows as the film progresses, his charges in Bolivia dwindle and become increasingly preoccupied with sheer survival and evasion of capture. We figure they’re doomed when government troops emerge from behind rocks and bushes on a hillside, multiplying menacingly like Hitchcock birds around Bodega Bay.
A Guevara biopic is a particularly daunting pursuit because he was and remains a man shrouded in controversy. The Motorcycle Diaries neatly skirted the issue by limiting itself to his unimpeachable Bolivarian expedition. Che is more ambitious. However, it doesn’t quite confront contradictory aspects in his public persona. Consider that what’s most controversial about Guevara transpired in-between victory in Cuba and the trip to New York. The interval is elided by the narrative but not ignored altogether. A throng of protesters awaits him in front of the U.N. building. “Traitor”, “Assassin”, they scream. During his address to the U.N. assembly, Guevara admits that executions have taken place. Soderbergh shows the execution of two rebels who raped and murdered a peasant woman and her teenage daughter. But these are not the acts that angered the protestors. Their ire was likely caused by the executions of hundreds without due process when Guevara was in charge of La Cabańa prison, the persecution of clergy and homosexuals, and the erosion of basic civil liberties. Benicio del Toro exudes the necessary charisma and makes Guevara’s professed love for and belief in mankind seem genuine. His performance also provides hints of Guevara’s arrogance and potential for cruelty. In Bolivia, he strikes a horse. The brief view is perhaps meant to be taken metaphorically. It’s too little, too late. Guevara once told a British newspaper that, had the Russian nuclear missiles been under Cuban control, they would have been deployed. Perhaps an empty boast, but Soderbergh’s Che seems incapable of uttering it. This filmic portrait is too simplistic to adequately account for the deep paradoxes within the man.
The Motorcycle Diaries focuses solely on Guevara’s coming-of-age journey across South America. The narrow parameters resulted in a film that pleased Guevara’s admirers worldwide without having to broach more ambiguous and complex phases of his life. Che was originally conceived as the story of Guevara’s attempt to foment revolution in Bolivia. Terence Malick was hired as director but he left to make The New World, so producer Soderbergh took his place. Eventually, Guevara’s major failure became chapter two of a longer film that first depicts his greatest triumph, the Cuban Revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power. By design, the new film is unconcerned with Guevara’s private life. For instance, we never see his Mexican wife and daughter and Aleida March is regarded almost exclusively within the context of her joining the July 26th movement. Che also eschews attempts to fit the material into narrative formulas or to make it subservient to a message or lesson to be served to the audience.
Part I of Che, titled The Argentine, crosscuts between the Cuban campaign and b&w scenes of his 1964 trip to New York City to address the United Nations. An early scene shows the first meeting between Castro and Guevara over dinner at a private home in Mexico City. Their conversation provides the audience with compelling rationale for violent revolt in order to overthrow the corrupt and unjust Batista regime. Che dwells on the political underpinnings of the revolution and the tactical strategy utilized. The recruitment and training of combatants, the raising of the social consciousness of the peasants, and the execution of military goals are vividly dramatized without succumbing to outwardly emotional appeals. The film is a thorough anatomy of a revolution, a descendant of Gillo Portecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers. To watch The Argentine is a dynamic experience, as the rebels advance inexorably from the Sierra Maestra mountains westwards to Havana. Repeatedly, Soderbergh cuts to scenes of the march to Havana while the soundtrack identified with the 1964 trip to New York is still playing. Guevara’s Face the Nation interview, his U.N. address, and a reading from his memoirs can be heard over pre-1959 visuals. The effect is exhilarating, in that it forces the viewer to consider both periods simultaneously and how each impinges upon the other.
For part II, Soderbergh changes from anamorphic to spherical lenses to create a tighter frame. The color palette is appropriately less varied and the tones subdued. The aspect ratio diminishes along with Guevara’s freedom of movement and the effectiveness of his tactics. The camera still moves in Bolivia but never along tracks or anything that signifies it knows where it’s going. Now it’s mostly handheld and tentative. The action is deeply grounded in the physical realm. Whereas in Cuba the group under Guevara’s command grows as the film progresses, his charges in Bolivia dwindle and become increasingly preoccupied with sheer survival and evasion of capture. We figure they’re doomed when government troops emerge from behind rocks and bushes on a hillside, multiplying menacingly like Hitchcock birds around Bodega Bay.
A Guevara biopic is a particularly daunting pursuit because he was and remains a man shrouded in controversy. The Motorcycle Diaries neatly skirted the issue by limiting itself to his unimpeachable Bolivarian expedition. Che is more ambitious. However, it doesn’t quite confront contradictory aspects in his public persona. Consider that what’s most controversial about Guevara transpired in-between victory in Cuba and the trip to New York. The interval is elided by the narrative but not ignored altogether. A throng of protesters awaits him in front of the U.N. building. “Traitor”, “Assassin”, they scream. During his address to the U.N. assembly, Guevara admits that executions have taken place. Soderbergh shows the execution of two rebels who raped and murdered a peasant woman and her teenage daughter. But these are not the acts that angered the protestors. Their ire was likely caused by the executions of hundreds without due process when Guevara was in charge of La Cabańa prison, the persecution of clergy and homosexuals, and the erosion of basic civil liberties. Benicio del Toro exudes the necessary charisma and makes Guevara’s professed love for and belief in mankind seem genuine. His performance also provides hints of Guevara’s arrogance and potential for cruelty. In Bolivia, he strikes a horse. The brief view is perhaps meant to be taken metaphorically. It’s too little, too late. Guevara once told a British newspaper that, had the Russian nuclear missiles been under Cuban control, they would have been deployed. Perhaps an empty boast, but Soderbergh’s Che seems incapable of uttering it. This filmic portrait is too simplistic to adequately account for the deep paradoxes within the man.