Che
Che
I spent four-and-a-half hours watching Steven Soderbergh’s account of the exploits of controversial revolutionary Che Guevara and I would have happily stayed in my seat for another four hours had the director added a third installment to his two-part epic. What impresses me about Che—and what seems to have its critics flummoxed—is that it’s less a film about Guevara than it is about how revolutions are waged. Soderbergh has made a conscious choice to rarely allow us a glimpse of Che’s life out of his uniform. Indeed, we never see him enjoying a solitary introspective moment at all. Both parts of Che take place almost exclusively the jungles of Cuba and Bolivia respectively, where Guevara leads his men through various skirmishes with their opponents and attempts to create a collective where learning and loyalty are prized, while dissent and deceit are punished by exile or death. Far from idolizing its subject, the film gives full weight to both sides of Guevara’s personality—the charismatic, fiery voice of the revolution and the paranoid mini-tyrant who cared for little besides his cause. Beautifully shot, superbly paced and wholly absorbing, Che is an extraordinary achievement for everyone involved and the finest film I saw in 2008.
