Che - 2ème partie - Guerilla

It helps to know that this was originally brought to life as a Terrence Malick screenplay about Che's disastrous forray in Bolivia. Financing fell through and Soderbergh stepped in to direct. He conceived a first part and shot both back to back as one film trailing Che's rise and fall.

He retained however what I believe would be Malick's approach: no politics and a just visual poem about the man behind the image, exhaustive as the horrible slog through Cuban jungles and windswept Andean plateaus must have been. Malick applied this to his New World that he abandoned Che for, lyrical many times over.

But Soderbergh being an ambitious filmmaker, he puzzled over this a little more. Here was a man of action at the center of many narratives about him, some fashioned by himself, conflictingly reported as iconic revolutionary or terrorist, charismatic leader or ruthless thug, erudite Marxist thinker or brutal soldier.

So how to visually exemplify this contradicting ethos as our film about him? And how to arrange a world around this person in such a way as to absorb him whole, unfettered from narrative - but writing it as he goes along - off camera - but ironically on - and as part of that world where narratives are devised to explain him. As flesh and bones, opposed to a cutout from a history book.

One way to do this, would be via Brecht and artifice. The Korda photograph would reveal lots, how we know people from images, how we build narratives from them. Eisenstein sought the same in a deeper way, coming up with what he termed the 'dialectical montage': a world assembled by the eye, and in such ways as the eye aspires to create it.

So what Soderbergh does, is everything by halves: a dialectic between two films trailing opposite sides of struggle, glory and failure, optimism and despair. Two visual palettes, two points of view in the first film, one in the presence of cameras hoping to capture the real person, the other were that image was being forged in action.

The problem, is of course that Brecht and Eisenstein made art in the hope to change the world, to awaken consciousness, Marxist art with its trappings. By now we have grown disillusioned with the idea, and Soderbergh makes no case and addresses no present struggles.

But we still have the cinematic essay about all this.

The first part: a narrative broadcast from real life, meant to reveal purpose, ends, revolution. The second part: we get to note in passing a life that is infinitely more expansive than any story would explain, more complex, beautiful, frustrating, and devoid of any apparent purpose other than what we choose as our struggle, truly a guerilla life.

I imagine a tremendous film from these notions. Just notice the remarkable way Part 2 opens. Che arrives at Bolivia in disguise, having shed self and popular image. No longer minister, spokesman, diplomat, guerilla, he is an ordinary man lying on a hotel bed, one among many tourists. Life could be anything once more, holds endless possibility. Cessation.

What does he do? He begins to fashion the same narrative as before, revolution again. Chimera this time. Transient life foils him in Bolivia. Instead of changing the world once more, he leaves behind a story of dying for it. We have a story about it as our film, adding to the rest.

Possibly the most brilliant thing about Che: Part Two, as we begin to integrate it with Part One in our minds, is that there is no clarification of why Che chose to confidentially abscond from Cuba after the revolution, no allusion to his experience in the Congo, no clarification of why he chose Bolivia as his subsequent setting for a coup d'etat, no allusion to the political decisions he made as a young man motorcycling across South America, which Walter Salles has given prominent familiarity. Extraordinary focus is given to Che meeting the volunteers who accompany his guerrilla factions. Yet hardly any endeavor is made to single them out as individuals, to establish involved relationships. He is reasonably unreasonable. Che drives an unbreakable doctrine to leave no wounded man behind. But there is no feeling that he is deeply directly concerned with his men. It is the concept.

In Part 1, in Cuba, the rebels are welcomed by the people of the villages, given food and cover, supported in what grows to be a victorious revolution. Here, in Bolivia, not much understanding is apparent. Villagers expose him. They protect government troops, not his own. When he expounds on the onesidedness of the government medical system, his audience appears uninterested. You cannot lead a people into revolution if they do not want to comply. Soderbergh shows U.S. military advisers working with the Bolivians, but doesn't fault the United States for Che's collapse. Che seems to have just misfigured his fight and the place where he wanted to have it.

In showcasing both wars, Soderbergh doesn't build his battle scenes as actions with specific results. Che's men attack and are attacked. They exchange fire with faraway assailants. There is generally a cut to the group in the aftershock of combat, its death toll not paused for. This is not a war movie. It is about one man's reasonably unreasonable drive to endure. There is no elaborate cinematography. Soderbergh looks firmly at Che's inflexible dedication. There are remarkable sporadic visceral shots, but being few they are all the more powerful, such as Che's POV shot during his final beats. There is an abundance of the terrain, where these men live for weeks at a time, and the all-consuming effect is of languor, Guevara himself having malaria part of the time.

Benicio Del Toro, one of the film's producers, gives a champion's performance, not least because it's modest. He isn't portrayed as the cutting edge like most epic heroes. In Cuba, he arises in conquest, in Bolivia, he falls to the reverse, and occasionally is actually difficult to distinguish behind a tangle of beard and hair. Del Toro illustrates not so much an identity as an attitude. You may think the film is too long. I think there's a genuine cause for its breadth. Guevara's affairs in Cuba and particularly Bolivia was not a sequence of episodes and sketches, but an undertaking of staying power that might virtually be called insane. In the end, Che as a whole or in parts is a commercially ballsy movie, one where its director begins by understanding the limits innate in cinematic biography and working progressively within those means.

Neatly skipping over everything from the coup in Cuba to his undercover entry into Bolivia, part two of Soderbergh's portrayal of Che Guevara is that of the tragic hero. As with Che – Part One, this rather rambling guerrilla warfare escapade through the colourful mountains of Bolivia is probably destined to disappoint more people than it will satisfy, so why was the film (and particularly Benicio Del Toro's performance) so loudly praised at Cannes?

James Rocchi, for instance, called it, a work of art that's, "not just the story of a revolutionary," but, "a revolution in and of itself." The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw called it a "flawed masterpiece." I return to my original contention for Part One – that the value lies particularly in depiction of a hero figure. And in an age when there is a surfeit of poor hero role-models, could it not be salutary to see a strongly honourable one, even if stripped of some of the less endearing episodes of his life? This is the psychological hero enshrined by the great Scottish essayist, Thomas Carlyle, in his seminal book, Heroes and Hero Worship. Heroes can be real or imaginary (or somewhere in-between). But should genuinely inspire us to higher goals, a higher purpose. Compare this with the unrealistic 'heroes' of standard Western storytelling: where a person undergoes trials and tribulations before obtaining a barely-believable reward – usually everlasting love or material wealth – as if by divine studio intervention. Real heroes have an excess of moral courage – not Lost Ark dare-devilishness or James Bond super-toys. They rise, and empower others to rise, to be the best that they can be. In Part One, Che succeeds. In Part Two, he fails. It is not for want of moral courage but since a) not all good plans can succeed and b) being human, mistakes are inevitable.

Guevara's intellectual clarity is flawed when he equates conditions that justify armed struggle with conditions that make that armed struggle able to succeed. It is a serious miscalculation.

High in the mountains from La Paz, the colours are breathtaking. There is an air of mise-en-scene authenticity that was occasionally lacking in Che - Part One (The U.S. would not allow Soderbergh to film in Cuba.) Visual treats are heightened by maximising natural light and the extreme flexibility and realism offered with groundbreaking RED cameras. This is a high performance digital cine camera with the quality of 35mm film and the convenience of pure digital. Designed for flexibility and functionality, the package weighs a mere 9 lbs. "Shooting with RED is like hearing the Beatles for the first time," says Soderbergh. "RED sees the way I see . . . so organic, so beautifully attuned to that most natural of phenomena – light." If Che had stopped with the successful Cuban revolution it would have enshrouded him with an almost mystical invincibility. That he fails in Bolivia shows not only that he has human limitations but that it is his moral virtues that are remembered, not the political triumph. Critics will say – and with some justification - that his armed struggle inspired much less noble characters to achieve tin-pot dictatorships. His development of guerrilla fighting tactics are not good or bad in themselves (and have since been used for both).

But for all its praiseworthiness, the film often seems to lack dramatic and narrative tension. We stumble from one escapade to another, knowing that he will eventually meet his death. I found myself glancing at my watch and thinking it could have been shorter. But the work that has gone into this – interviews with people from all sides and even getting one of Guevara's ex-comrades to coach actors on the minutiae of the Bolivian operations – make the film a commendable achievement. It might not be top-flight entertainment, but it demonstrates integrity in documenting a significant slice of history.

There is also another very important point in the Che 'hero' figure here. It's about failure. That if you try your utmost, even if you fail, your effort will not have been in vain because it may give others hope and moral courage. One could cynically call it a 'martyr' complex, and it is found, of course, in many religious figures as well. But Che does not 'sacrifice' himself. He does what he does best, to the best of his not inconsiderate ability, and so provides an example. Success or failure in any particular instance become mere details.

With the U.S.'s longstanding and illegal blockade of Cuba (all in the name of 'freedom'), I am tempted to write that Che Parts 1 & 2 are too good to be wasted on the U.S. But that would be to invite a contention that the film has sought so earnestly to avoid. One must hope that many viewers will have the skill to view Che without politics and the bias that inevitably engenders. Whatever its faults, it rehabilitates Soderbergh from the populist nonsense of Oceans 11.

But if you haven't heard of Che Guevara or seen Part One, or if you can't get past the phrase 'murderous Marxist' without frothing at the mouth, I might struggle to imagine what you would get from this film. The same can be said for many who have, and can.

Ironically the most talked-about American film in the 2008 New York Film Festival is 98% in Spanish. The extra-long film's controversy began at the Cannes Festival. There were love-hate notices, and considerable doubts about commercial prospects. As consolation the star, Benicio Del Toro, got the Best Actor award there. I'm talking about Steven Soderbergh's 'Che,' of course. That's the name it's going by in this version, shown in New York as at Cannes in two 2-hour-plus segments without opening title or end credits. 'Che' is certainly appropriate since Ernesto "Che" Guevara is in almost every scene. Del Toro is impressive, hanging in reliably through thick and thin, from days of glorious victory in part one to months of humiliating defeat in part two, appealing and simpatico in all his varied manifestations, even disguised as a bald graying man to sneak into Bolivia. It's a terrific performance; one wishes it had a better setting.

If you are patient enough to sit through the over four hours, with an intermission between the two sections, there are rewards. There's an authentic feel throughout--fortunately Soderbergh made the decision to film in Spanish (though some of the actors, oddly enough in the English segments especially, are wooden). You get a good outline of what guerrilla warfare, Che style, was like: the teaching, the recruitment of campesinos, the morality, the discipline, the hardship, and the fighting--as well as Che's gradual morphing from company doctor to full-fledged military leader. Use of a new 9-pound 35 mm-quality RED "digital high performance cine camera" that just became available in time for filming enabled DP Peter Andrews and his crew to produce images that are a bit cold, but at times still sing, and are always sharp and smooth.

The film is in two parts--Soderbergh is calling them two "films," and the plan is to release them commercially as such. First is 'The Argentine,' depicting Che's leadership in jungle and town fighting that led up to the fall of Havana in the late 50's, and the second is 'Guerrilla,' and concerns Che's failed effort nearly a decade later in Bolivia to spearhead a revolution, a fruitful mission that led to Guevara's capture and execution in 1967. The second part was to have been the original film and was written first and, I think, shot first. Producer Laura Bickford says that part two is more of a thriller, while part one is more of an action film with big battle scenes. Yes, but both parts have a lot in common--too much--since both spend a large part of their time following the guerrillas through rough country. Guerrilla an unmitigated downer since the Bolivian revolt was doomed from the start. The group of Cubans who tried to lead it didn't get a friendly reception from the Bolivian campesinos, who suspected foreigners, and thought of the Cuban communists as godless rapists. There is a third part, a kind of celebratory black and white interval made up of Che's speech at the United Nations in 1964 and interviews with him at that time, but that is inter-cut in the first segment. The first part also has Fidel and is considerably more upbeat, leading as it does to the victory in Santa Clara in 1959 that led to the fall of the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba.

During 'Guerilla' I kept thinking how this could indeed work as a quality European-style miniseries, which might begin with a shortened version of Walter Salles's 'Motorcycle Diaries' and go on to take us to Guevara's fateful meeting with Fidel in Mexico and enlistment in the 26th of July Movement. There could be much more about his extensive travels and diplomatic missions. This is far from a complete picture of the man, his childhood interest in chess, his lifelong interest in poetry, the books he wrote; even his international fame is only touched on. And what about his harsh, cruel side? Really what Soderbergh is most interested in isn't Che, but revolution, and guerrilla warfare. The lasting impression that the 4+ hours leave is of slogging through woods and jungle with wounded and sick men and women and idealistic dedication to a the cause of ending the tyranny of the rich. Someone mentioned being reminded of Terrence Malick's 'The Tin Red Line,' and yes, the meandering, episodic battle approach is similar; but 'The Thin Red Line' has stronger characters (hardly anybody emerges forcefully besides Che), and it's a really good film. This is an impressive, but unfinished and ill-fated, effort.

This 8-years-gestating, heavily researched labor of love (how many more Ocean's must come to pay for it?) is a vanity project, too long for a regular theatrical release and too short for a miniseries. Radical editing--or major expansion--would have made it into something more successful, and as it is it's a long slog, especially in the second half.

It's clear that this slogging could have been trimmed down, though it's not so clear what form the resulting film would have taken--but with a little bit of luck it might have been quite a good one.

Part Two picks up... not where the last film left off. As part of the quasi-conventionality of Steven Soderbergh's epic 4+ hour event, Che's two stories are told as classic "Rise" and "Fall" scenarios. In Part Two, Che Guevara, leaving his post as a bureaucrat in Cuba and after a failed attempt in the Congo (only in passing mentioned in the film), goes down to Bolivia to try and start up another through-the-jungle style revolution. Things don't go quite as well planned, at all, probably because of Che's then notorious stature as a Communist and revolutionary, and in part because of America's involvement on the side of the Bolivian Government, and, of course, that Castro wasn't really around as a back-up for Che.

As it goes, the second part of Che is sadder, but in some ways wiser than the first part. Which makes sense, as Guevara has to endure low morale from his men, betrayals from those around him, constant mistakes by grunts and nearby peasants, and by ultimately the enclosing, larger military force. But what's sadder still is that Guevara, no matter what, won't give in. One may see this as an incredible strength or a fatal flaw- maybe both- but it's also clear how one starts to see Che, if not totally more fully rounded, then as something of a more sympathetic character. True, he did kill, and executed, and felt justified all the way. And yet it starts to work on the viewer in the sense of a primal level of pity; the sequence where Guevara's health worsens without medicine, leading up to the shocking stabbing of a horse, marks as one of the most memorable and satisfying of any film this year.

Again, Soderbergh's command of narrative is strong, if, on occasion, slightly sluggish (understandable due to the big running time), and one or two scenes just feel totally odd (Matt Damon?), but these are minor liabilities. Going this time for the straight color camera approach, this is almost like a pure militia-style war picture, told with a great deal of care for the men in the group, as well as Guevara as the Lord-over this group, and how things dwindle down the final scene. And as always, Del-Toro is at the top of his game, in every scene, every beat knowing this guy so well- for better and for worse- that he comes about as close to embodiment as possible. Overall, the two parts of Che make up an impressive package: history as drama in compelling style, good for an audience even if they don't know Che or, better, if they don't think highly of him. It's that special. 8.5/10