The two-part film Che, an epic biography of Cuban Revolutionary leader Che Guevara, falls short of its expected epic proportions—though it is arguably better for it. In a decisive rebellion against the conventional biopic drama formula, director Steven Soderbergh takes the risk of portraying a controversial but universally recognized figure and transforming him into, well, probably something closer to what he actually was.
This creative risk doesn’t seem to deter the audience—the woman behind me was bawling by the end, though perhaps in relief that the four-plus hours of film were over. If anything, Soderbergh pushes viewers out of their comfort zone. And while the film suffers in its omission of many historical moments, the director ultimately offers a compelling biopic with little conviction for the mythic figure of mass-produced t-shirt proportions.
The first half of the epic moves quickly and in a style akin to a documentary. Shaky camera movements attempt to convince the audience that it is seeing the real Che in action. Benecio del Toro’s striking physical similarity to Guevara, as well as his seamless acting performance, contributes considerably to this perception.
Aside from vignettes depicting Che’s boat trip to Cuba, his first encounter with Fidel Castro, and his post-revolution speech at the United Nations, the bulk of the film takes place during wartime. However, unlike contemporary war films like Saving Private Ryan, the film does not cogitate on the horrors of war or its psychological impacts, but rather presents slow-moving guerilla warfare interspersed with a few action scenes that culminate in the final tour de force moment.
Yet more time is spent with the revolutionary as he sucks on a cigar, wheezes his way through the jungle, and reads in a hammock—all the while managing to inspire, heal, and educate his troops during downtime.
In the second half of the film, Che’s downfall in Bolivia opens up a more pitiable side of the complicated man than is presented in the first segment. If only because his attempt to repeat his revolution in Cuba fails, Soderbergh offers us a window to sympathize with Che rather than remain in a removed awe.
Che, distanced from Castro, exhausts his revolutionary spirit and finds more difficulty living as an Argentine outsider in Bolivia than he did in Cuba. He enters a territory of severely impoverished, uneducated peasants coerced by Bolivian troops and uninspired by the revolutionary; even his own men lack his morale and fervor.
In a CIA-backed mission, Che is captured and executed in a manner unbefitting the man depicted in the beginning portion of the film. In part two, Soderbergh doesn’t attempt to inflate Che into a mythical figure turned martyr, but rather shows the compelling figure whose unrelenting struggle marked both his victory and his deluded fall. The film may come as a shock to naïve, Che-poster-toting high-schoolers, showing how Che’s blindsided idealism led to brutal tactics and ultimately failed to win him another revolution.
Although the two parts of the film have been released separately in various theaters, I would hardly consider seeing them apart. While there is a gaping hole between Che I and Che II with the former based on the Cuban revolution and the latter jumping to Che’s Bolivian Diaries over a decade later, each part is inevitably incomplete without the other. Yet I left the cinema, like I imagine most viewers did, with the feeling that, despite the four and a half hours of film I triumphantly stayed awake for, there was still something missing.
Aside from historical background and a lack of adequate context between the two halves, there were elements of the typical biography piece that Soderbergh left out. Most strikingly absent was the heavily dramatic, emotional aspect to the film’s protagonist. There is an enduring distance throughout the film between the viewer and Che, and though Soderbergh doesn’t push us to sympathize too heavily with him—especially in the first half—he departs from the overly dramatic Hollywood war film we have grown familiar with. Che seems only concerned with giving us a fair view of what Che was really like on the outside. At times austere, emotionally guarded, but driven by an ideology that has elevated him to mythic proportions, del Toro brings to life the Che that those around him witnessed, offering little insight into the revolutionary’s inner drama.
If nothing else, Che offers the feeling of being in the presence of a larger-than-life figure. Whatever Soderbergh leaves out doesn’t entirely ruin the viewing experience or leave us as dazed and confused as we would expect (once we admit that we are going to have to Wikipedia a few things when we get home). Rather, Che provides a tangible and unconventional, though not incredibly profound, view of Guevara.
