NYFF Review: Che

By Katey Rich: 2008-10-03 01:56:33

It's unclear exactly what Steven Soderbergh is going for with Che. His enormous, ambitious, sprawling epic about the Argentinean rebel and worldwide symbol seems to aim to say something about the man whose face launched a thousand T-shirts, but even after four hours spent with Che Guevara, we learn little more about him than we could have from Wikipedia. Less, actually. Focusing tightly on two major events in Guevara's life-- the Cuban Revolution, and the failed attempt at a revolution in Bolivia ten years later--the movie gets the details right but none of the essence. Whatever inspired this man to lead the extraordinary life he did will have to be found in some other Guevara biopic.

The most maddening thing about the paired films, the one set in Cuba called The Argentine and the one set in Bolivia called Guerrilla, is that they essentially tell the same story with different endings. Each time Guevara recruits men and women from the countrysides of impoverished countries, learning each of their names and teaching them to use weapons and guerrilla warfare. Each time, there are lots and lots of conferences between bearded men in the jungle, in which they discuss the minute details of war tactics. In the first film, when Guevara leads men in one part of Cuba while Fidel Castro sacks cities in another, plans go well; the army is well-fed, the villagers are grateful, and eventually whole cities flock around the rebels as they march toward Havana in victory. In the second film, it goes far worse; Guevera has fewer troops, less support from the people of Bolivia, and a well-organized military closing in on his band of guerrillas.

Benicio del Toro anchors the film with his performance as Che, capturing both the concerned physician and the irascible, unrelenting leader that Guevara could be. We start with him as a clean-shaven young doctor in Mexico, meeting Fidel Castro at a dinner party, and end with him facing his defeat in Bolivia, injured and asthmatic and aged beyond his years. Del Toro is especially intriguing in the scenes set in New York, shot in black-and-white and interspersed throughout the first film, providing a way for Guevara himself to narrate his own journey through the Cuban Revolution. We also see him address the United Nations as the ambassador from Cuba, demonstrating a political braggadocio that clearly came as a result from the many hard months of fighting in the fields.

But del Toro couldn't possibly have done enough to break through the murk of the film. Soderbergh seems to have no interest in inviting in the audience, playing with narrative or film style to let the audience play a role in piecing the character together for themselves. Instead the film marches along at its own disinterested pace, rarely explaining which moments might be important than others or even the roles of some key characters. Soderbergh may have aimed to pull aside context and let Che stand on his own, but instead he abandons his lead character within a stillborn film.

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