I'm glad I sat through Ocean's Thirteen if only for the small consolation that in a way (indirectly perhaps) I helped make Che possible. Soderbergh's nearly four-and-a-half hour unfussy, objective-as-you-can-get film on our enigmatic Mr. Guevara is fantastic for accomplishing so much with so little. By so little I'm not referring to the size of the film's budget, its cast of hundreds, or its number of locations, but rather the simplicity that's harnessed to make a great impact.
Soderbergh disposes of a definitive "style" ("The most misused word since love"-Sidney Lumet) and instead opts for the often-preached-seldom-practiced theory of "Where is the best place I can put the camera to tell this story?" Examples include: Che's trip to the U.N. in 1964 shot with extreme close-ups in grainy black-and-white (the things you notice in a foreign country are the little details-billboards, cocktail napkins, etc.); the derailing of a Batista troop train (shades of Lawrence of Arabia, more on that later); Che reviewing his troops; and especially the rare, introspective scenes of Che isolated from his fellow revolutionairies on the boat to Cuba (Soderbergh is so good at just showing his characters thinking, something other filmmakers so rarely do, and if so, rarely succeed at accomplishing); and of course his capture as he gazes uphill at the hundreds of soldiers coming down at him, he knows the jig is up...for now.
Che truly is a film that needs to experienced in its roadshow presentation. Unless Soderbergh extensively re-edits parts one and two (being "The Argentinean" & "Guerilla") I do not think Cuba or Bolivia can stand on their own as films. The contrasts of the two films are so necessary: the first being the successful application of of his and Fidel's tactics in the Cuban revolution; the second being the same tactics implemented in a very different (and yet the similar) country, political and geographic climate ending in utter failure (only three survivors remained at the end).
The structure of the film, though not its style (I hate that word), recalls Lawrence of Arabia, the story of the Arab revolt against the Turks during the First World War led by British Colonel T.E. Lawrence. The film's first half, culminating in the taking of the key port city of Aqaba, parallels Che's lightning campaign. I almost imagined Fidel and Raul spouting the same lines that take us into Lawrence's intermission: "That poor devil's riding the whirlwind." "Let's hope we're not." Just like Lawrence Che's success in Cuba bolsters his confidence in himself and the people of Latin America to follow in Cuba's footsteps and so he goes to Bolivia to spread his revolution. In 1956 he went into Cuba with 82 men (one of them of course being Fidel) and won a country, in Bolivia he went into the heart of a U.S.-sponsored dictatorship. Instead of harnessing the politicized industrial mining region in the north of the country he shunned his contacts and heads south to convert a politically ignorant peasantry, distrustful of foreigners to say the least. The same sort of hubris lead Lawrence into Turkish territory with only a handful of men and next-to-no supplies in the dead of Arab winter. Hubris it seems to Che's detractors (although even Fidel had his doubts), gutsy to his devotees. "We've gotten out of tougher spots than this," one of his men Cuban friends tells him when things get particularly grim in Bolivia.
Like Lawrence, Che never seeks to explain the man. We get to know his qualities-intelligent, tough, demanding, relentless, compassionate, loving-but are given no explanations. In short: a stone believer, a rock-hard red. A humanist who put people people before firing squads. "Che was a hard-ass," Soderbergh is quoted of saying. And yet, as one of Che's followers in the Congo remarked, "He would rather face a bullet than reality." For Che, it's "revolution or death."
Soderbergh also said that Che believed that no artists could be true revolutionaries since they are more dedicated to their muses than to the Party line. Why then make a film about such a person? I feel that we need to explore and understand extreme personalities, the world turns just as much because of them as it does because of us. The need to look at that kind of person and how their mind operates, how they succeed and how they fail is necessary whether you oppose or seek inspiration from them-because they exist and they cannot be ignored. I agree with certain people out there who have said this film is the beginning of a dialogue, not the end of one. This film can stand alone as a study, but it's not the whole story. It is part of what the man did in a long life-in experience if not in years. Narrow and deep, rather than wide and shallow. Take that for what it's worth.
