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Imagine Steven Soderberg coming up to you and asking for upwards of $60 million to make his next movie.  Now imagine him telling you that it’s a four and a half hour bio-epic about Che Guavera.  Who knows how this movie got made?  It was obviously doomed from the onset to have negative returns for its investors.  That said, this movie is unlike anything I have ever seen.  It accomplishes everything it sets out to do from the beginning, chronicling the last 13 years of this man’s life using a variety of cinematic techniques, which all complement one another beautifully.

The first part of the movie starts in 1954.  Guavera and Castro are sharing dinner with other revolutionaries in Mexico City.  Probably one of the most important realizations comes here when we see a few casually dressed individuals planning the fate of an entire country over dinner and a few beers.  The movie takes off with the onset of their campaign in Cuba.

It’s difficult to say what exactly this movie is trying to say.  Sometimes it follows slowly developing, mundane events, sometimes it brings us into the heart of a battle.  All of this is done cutting back to an interview with Guavera from 1964.  This creates an incredible perspective, allowing us to hear all about the passion of these guerrillas as the hardships and barbarity of their campaign takes place on screen.  This voiceover allows the first half of the film to have a fantastic contemplative feel.  Conversely, there are no real opportunities to study the internal conflicts within these characters.  They are constantly in situations where there are more important things than actualizing the class struggle taking place around them.  This ongoing internal monologue makes up for a lack of real time spent alone to focus on the overflowing emotions of the characters.

In order for the characters of this movie to be sympathetic, one needs to understand what oppression has brought them to the point that they’ll sacrifice their life just for the chance that other’s will be able to live in a more humane world.  There was virtually no exhibition on-screen of any such government oppression, leaving viewers to their historical knowledge in making up back stories and motivations for these characters.  It was a bit odd that the antagonist was constantly exhibited as simply “the bad guy” with no exhibitions of the bad things that he has allegedly done.  We are forced to assume that the choreographers of the revolution are intelligent, ambitious, moral, and most importantly, trustworthy.  Looking back on the movie, there was never any justification for any of these assumptions.  There was never any harm displayed on the screen that seemed to warrant the tremendous foul called by the likes of Castro and Guavera.  We are left with Che’s contemplations via voiceover instead.  We believe this man is good, because he talks with such charm.  Soderberg assumes that is all the audience needs to know to eat out of this man’s hand.

The second part of Che takes place over the course of just under a year, starting in 1966.  Che has achieved international fame, but feels that in keeping with his revolutionary ideals, must now turn his eyes inland and orchestrate the start of a similar revolution in Bolivia.  Slipping into anonymity, changing his name, initially even using disguises, Guavera becomes an odd sort of spectre.  His mere mention seems enough to excite any freedom-craving Bolivian, but his actual presence seems to do very little to bolster their struggle.  This portion of the film aims to suck the viewer into that exact feeling of doom that the actual Bolivian guerrillas felt in 1966 and 1967.  This portion of the film is shot in a less wide aspect ratio, and utilizes a much less saturated color palette.  There is all of the violence of the first half, with many scenes playing out very similarly, but something is missing.  Gone is that incredible voiceover!  We are left very much in the dark in terms of what any of the characters are thinking.  Of course we can surmise when something scares them or makes them happy or more likely, sad, but that complex internal debate is sadly missing without any deliberate reflection of the events unfolding on-screen.  It is certainly tragic to watch Guavera’s plan’s unfold, unfurl, and generally go to shit, but this is only because we grew to know so much about him in the first two hours of the movie.  The second part simply cannot stand on its own.  It felt like this latter half was more about going through the motions, and attempting to repeat the first half, but this time with a different result.

I wholeheartedly recommend Che, as it is one of the most ambitious movies of the last several decades.  Del Toro fits into the role so naturally, that it is easy watching the movie to forget that you are watching anything but original footage of Che, himself.  Soderberg has created something that approaches the life of an impactful man, and chronicles it without drawing any conclusions as to his morality.  The comprehensiveness of this movie is what is truly to be commended.  It is at heart, great filmmaking.  The only enduring question is how on earth this movie ever got the financing to be made.  Does it even have a target audience?

-Paul Brinnel