Chico

Wow, loved it, a celebration of the struggle not the ideology. Wonderfully complex.

Having lived through a dictatorship and having participated in a revolution I appreciate the cold reality and lack of romanticization in the film. Life is hard and definitely not romantic when you are in the trenches fighting a superiour enemy. But life is not miserable, I found the other side of war — the humour, the laughter and the absurdity a bit scarce in this film. Well the absurdity did come through.

I found the film complicated, like life, the way it should be. The film was never preachy, quite a feat considering the intensity with which Chico embraced life according to his principles. I liked Chico even when I didn't agree with him, the depiction of Yugoslavia and the Croatian struggle within it, was moving but very much lacking in perspective; choices are difficult when one's feet are in the fire, and perspective comes with time and distance. Yugoslavia was the real victim, the US and Germany were the real criminals, and the poor Serbians, Croatians and Bosnians were very much the pawns. Pawns that had lived peacefully and admirably until the West engineered the economic collapse of Yugoslavia.

The references to Che Guevara's book "Guerrilla Warfare" which so influenced Chico's character might be completely lost in todays generation and on a North American audience. But it would be great for people to see this film and be exposed to a perspective not doctored by the corporate media and the pentagon, to get a real feeling about the complexities of war. A must see film. A great story.

CHICO, a two hour film that is a mixture of documentary footage, biographical exploration of an amazing young man who just happens to be the actor portraying himself, and historical drama creating a film that is as confusing, contradictory, explicitly powerful and ugly as the wars it traverses. Given the fact that the film is shot in multiple locations and in many languages (Spanish, English, Hungarian, Croatian, German, and more), it is extremely demanding of the viewer: not one minute of concentration can be spared to attain the impact of the message writer/director Ibolya Fekete spreads before us.

Chico (Eduardo Rózsa Flores on whose life this film is based and who stuns with his acting skills) begins the film as a young boy living in Chile, the son of a Bolivian Catholic mother and a Hungarian Jewish father, and is caught up in the revolutions of the 1960s very much under the influence of Che Guevara's teachings. He family is Communist but Catholic (!), forced to flee Pinochet's Chile and the turnover with Allende, and though not speaking any language but Spanish, Chico goes to Europe as a young man whose goal is journalism but whose convictions embrace revolution as the means to alter the future. In his confusing role of journalist/freedom fighter he becomes intimately involved with the revolutions in Hungary, Albania, Israel, Croatia and the Balkan War with the Yugoslavian decimation of the 1990s.

Throughout his travels from revolution to revolution, first as a reporter, but always ending up as a freedom fighter, we meet a huge cast of characters, a cast representing both sides of each revolution, and the lines between identities become blurred to the extent that it is impossible to identify the two sides at odds. It is here that Fekete makes his strongest statement: war is atrocious, cruel, meaningless, destructive, brutal and foolish. Chico sees it all yet continues to actively participate in the killing and the mayhem, all the while feeling the pull of his Catholicism and even his Jewish heritage bifurcating his emotional commitment.

The huge cast passes in front of our eyes so quickly that few are present long enough to evaluate as actors. One exception stands out: Richie Varga plays Jimmie, a American from Chicago who steps into the final battle of the film and leaves an indelible impression with his good looks and his sensitive portrayal of a soul searching for meaning in the mess of war. Easily the star of the film is the Chico of Eduardo Rózsa Flores, a man who made it through all the changes and chances of the story and maintains the ability to transmit his puzzling life to us in a verismo manner. This is a film that is very difficult to follow, just as are the various revolutions and wars in countries that are forever changing boundaries and names. But in the end it teaches us a lot about the concept of 'why revolution' and even more about the absurdity of war. Burningly alive cinema, this film is recommended for those who need to understand our global condition from the 1960s to the present. Grady Harp

Not a film for everyone. For those who dig at the roots of human conflict or who want some short primers in a back-corner part of the world, your time won't be wasted - It is a hard story to follow, and seems improbable even as we watch, but Flores was an actual man, who stared in an earlier Fekete movie, "Bolshe Vita", 1996. As she got to know him she was intrigued by his 'rootless' background and decided to make a movie, with Chico himself. With some fictional elements, this is his story.

It's hard to follow in part because she seems to have stitched together film footage of varying quality. Some of it is rough and blurry. It's also hard because we ordinary film-buffs will not know the national flags being flown: we are not sure who Chico is fighting with, either in Hungary or later in shattering Yugoslavia. (Hint: he's with the Croatians against the Serbs and Chetniks.) - See more at: http://www.allinoneboat.org/#sthash.D27nZrzL.dpuf

I don't want to tell much about the movie I write about the main character Ricardo (Edurardo Rozsa Flores).

He played Chico alias Ricardo. This movie is about him and his real life. Eduardo played himself. But in the movie his name is Ricardo. Director Fekete and Edurardo said that the movie based on pure fictions. Thats not true. This is Eduardo's life more like a biography than anything else.

Unique: Because the main role played but not an actor but the real person who's story has been made up for a film. Its like if you would see Che Guevara is playing himself instead of Benicio Del Toro in the Sodenbergh's Che movie.

Eduardo Rozsa Flores was a journalist first. Secondly he was a soldier. Thirdly he was a revolutionary when he joined to the Croats in 1991. And for last he is an actor. A one time one.

Eduardo Rozsa Flores and the Chico movie is a unique strong confusing road-movie type documentary with biographical elements. History. The movie is the history and shows us as it happened not forcing you to decide who was right or wrong as others wrote me before. It is a worth to see and I would say if you ever lived in a communist country or you are interested in the history of the communist countries then it is a must see movie. However it will be not easy to understand what is going on without a basic knowledge in the theme.

Note: Eduardo Rozsa Flores (Ricardo aka Chico in the movie) was brutally killed in a military police raid in Santa Cruz, Bolivia in 2009. 8 years later as he finished this movie. Died like he lived by the bullet. A real revolutionary hero of our post modern times. Maybe the last one...

I'm not sure a more challenging film has been made. Fekete, director of Bolshe Vita, itself a complex and difficult undertaking, went beyond what we think of as manageable material with Chico. Blurring fact and fiction, uniting a story told through 25 years in 5 nations, or almost-nations, or nations in the process of becoming, unified by the improbable story of an impossible man whose credibility lies in the fact that he is portraying himself, masterfully, honestly, fragmentarily. This is a film of genius by a filmmaker who is not satisfied unless she is on the trail of something very large, very real -- the only other filmmakers I can think of that approach this are the early Rossellini and the early Cassavetes. I would welcome further information on this director and how she managed to make this film.