DVD review: Che: Part One and Two

Published on Wednesday 24 June 2009 14:53

(Optimum)

THOUGH SPLIT IN TWO FOR ITS cinematic release, Che, Steven Soderbergh's four-hour film about Ernesto "Che" Guevara, is the kind of picture that benefits from watching as a complete entity rather than as separate films. Sure, that may be a big time commitment, but it's only when they're watched back-to-back that the full impact of Soderbergh's bold new approach to his subject matter – and this genre of filmmaking in general – can really be appreciated. Tracing both Che's rise to prominence as Fidel Castro's point man in the Cuban revolution and his downfall when he tried and failed to replicate that success in Bolivia, it's a film that seeks to interrogate one of the most mythologised, problematic and pored-over figures of the 20th century by challenging our perceptions of how such a figure should be presented on screen.

With Che played by Benicio Del Toro, it would have been easy to shoot a myth-enhancing film celebrating the radical chic icon adorning student bedrooms the world over, but Soderbergh strips away all that. He never frames Del Toro in classic hero poses or gives him thunderous oration to deliver. Instead, he does something much more clever: he presents a deliberately biased account of the man (the screenplay is based largely on Che's diaries with few dissenting voices) that's coolly intellectual, even boring at times, forcing us to ask ourselves why he's so revered and celebrated. We don't really get a sense of his interior life; even though he's telling his own story, Soderbergh finds subtle and clever ways to keep us at one step removed from Che.

That's where watching the films back-to-back reinforces how audacious Soderbergh has been. Separately, they're two interesting but resolutely unengaging movies. Together, they play like a great piece of installation art, one that questions how image can be created and manipulated. In the spirit of its protagonist, this is guerrilla filmmaking on a grand scale, with Soderbergh fighting against every cinematic instinct and every pre-conceived idea about how a movie like this should work. That still makes it a tough watch, but it's fascinating to get lost in and it has a cumulative power when both parts are watched in quick succession. Everything we learn about Che in the first half is effectively undermined and turned on its head in the second half, which shows how he fundamentally misunderstood the poor by viewing them as one homogenous mass in need of a saviour rather than complex individuals whose needs differed greatly in different nations. That's why the criticism Soderbergh received for not presenting a more obviously critical portrait of Che don't really wash. He presents the facts as they were and leaves it to us to interpret them.

Watching the films back-to-back also allows you to better appreciate Soderbergh's visual style, the way he changes film-stock, switches between black and white and colour, and even alters the aspect ratio of the two parts to draw attention to the way we view Che. It's too bad that, save for a few festival screenings, the film wasn't presented this way in cinemas. Obviously its length was a commercial barrier, but since neither film made any money anyway, what was there really to lose? At least now it can be viewed in its entirety and appreciated for the risk-taking, ambitious venture it is.