 |
 |
|
Che Director: Steven Soderbergh Genre: Historical Docu-drama Screenplay: Peter Buchanan Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Demain Bichir, Rodrigo Santoro, Franka Potente. At almost five hours running time, Che is definitely the longest film shown at TIFF08. It brought some interesting things to the festival, like being in Spanish with subtitles, plus being composed of a mixture of 16 MM B&W film and the beauty of digital RED camera video. This demonstration of modern video vs. older film format shows the future of movies and digital projection. The RED camera is being used extensively for filming TV series in Toronto, as well as music videos and often short films. It is the future and the future is now. So what about Che? It’s a two-part movie, each equal in length. The first shows the revolution in Cuba in the mid-fifties, which brought Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara de la Serna (Benicio Del Toro) to the world stage and Fidel Castro to power. The second, the later revolution attempt in Bolivia in the mid-sixties, which cost Che his life. The first is the more interesting movie, covering the arrival in Cuba with Fidel and Raul Castro (Demain Bichir & Rodrigo Santoro) and their struggle to overthrow the government of the dictator Batista, who ruled with the support of the military. The more the government tried to discourage the guerillas, the more it alienated the rural population, increasing their support of the efforts to overthrow the government. The result was the gradual erosion of the government authority. Eventually Batista left the island and Castro took control of the government and did institute some of the reforms promised during the revolution. He also took away the freedom under the guise of communism in its idealistic sense. In part two, Che tries to replicate the success of the Cuban revolution in Bolivia. But time has moved on and this is not like the Cuba of a decade earlier. Bolivia welcomes U.S.A. support and assistance to combat the rebel insurgents. The local poor have little to lose, but won’t lose it over a gang of foreign guerillas who have nothing to offer but talk. Still, without the American support and fighters, over time the revolution may have succeeded. But in truth it did not. After an extended chase through the mountains and hills, the rebels were eventually killed or caught. Che was wounded and held prisoner until it was decided to execute him, to end his influence on local politics. If he’d been Bolivian, he might have become a martyr. But he was a communist, and communism was beginning its decline. I had a few thoughts about the nature of this movie and its hero. Che was a young man born and raised in the privileged class, who felt the pain of the poor and wanted to help them. He seemed to have been seduced by the false equality of communism, in spite of being an educated and intelligent person. I guess being educated doesn’t make one smart. He tried to help those disadvantaged by their birth, yet he felt the only way to do it was kill people and take away the advantage of those born into it. Perhaps if he had lived in the twenty first century, he would have believed in social reform through business and the power of industry. Give a man charity and he becomes dependent, give him a job and he can earn for a lifetime. What might Che have become if he had worked in business for a living? As in many docu-dramas, this one is selective in its view of the hero. It only discloses what it feels portrays the image it wants to show. And so the reality is distorted to create the legend, which moves the story into entertainment and away from documentary. Perhaps the loss is not that great, and the gain is something for common people to believe in. The two parts of this long movie seemed unequal. The first was a great movie, expressing the times through the combination of grainy black & white film mixed with vibrant colour video. And it complimented the story of great challenges and the struggle for eventual success. This was the story of people coming together to fight for something good. They sacrificed for the cause, even though the reality was the replacement of one dictator with another. But the movie was about the achievements, not about the political after-effect. Part two was more like a re-enactment of something that worked once, without the passion and commitment of the people involved. The story fell flat and even the scenery seemed to be lackluster. It was like a pointless exercise, somewhat separated by many years from part one. How long can you film actors walking around in the bush before it gets boring? It was the last hour of the movie spread out over more than two. When Che was executed at the end, it hardly mattered, as long as it finished the movie and released the audience from confinement in the theatre. At the same time, it was an ending that seemed to have little conclusion, and nothing of the finality that lets a person get up and leave the theatre knowing the movie is over. We saw it coming so much earlier that it had no impact when it did come. The use of primarily Spanish in the movie helped make it real, but the subtitles were annoying, especially in a theatre with poor sightlines to the bottom of the screen. In a theatre with poor seating, it also became butt-painful to spend almost five hours watching this movie. Once it is available on DVD, it will be a full evenings entertainment in an environment the viewer can control, which may make it more enjoyable. A benefit beyond entertainment is that this movie may cause people to seek out the true story of Che Guevara, which is as interesting as the movie. His style of revolution and change is still being practiced in many countries in the world today. But seldom is it as effective as it has been in Cuba over the past fifty years. 
|