che part two: revolution as a protracted slog through increasing hardship into utter defeat

Yes, I did indeed see it without having seen part one, which was showing during the weeks that my Sweet Man had his heart attack and super quadrillion bypass surgery (which all seems to have come out just fine, gods willing, and thanks for asking)...

Undaunted, and convinced that these were films that ought to be given the fullscreen cinematic treatment, I took my seat in the darkened house after the Cuban revolution had been won and just as one shaven-headed Comrade Guevara (Benicio del Toro) was wending his way to Bolivia to do his level best to see communism proliferate throughout the new world. The upside is that I got to see it in its fullscreen cinematic glory. The downside is that because I'd missed the buildup in Cuba, the whole venture seemed doomed from the outset: two hours plus spent with a band of patriots getting scragglier, hungrier, more discouraged and disease-ridden, with nothing but camaraderie and noble rhetoric to buoy them up. Even if you didn't already know that Che left a handsome young corpse in a Bolivian mountain village, you're not long into the film before you can see they're heading inexorably for a bad end.

That said, this is not a gruelling film (as are, for instance, Synecdoche, New York in an interesting way and Australia in a gruelling way). It's not difficult to sit through, it doesn't feel too long, and it's done with such a deft, light touch and a facility with the unexpected that one becomes engrossed in spite of any nagging political misgivings or preconceptions.

The politics of Guevara's legacy (hero of the people? bloodthirsty egoist chasing his own martyrdom? are the two mutually exclusive?) are of course endlessly debatable. Although this camera tries to keep an objective distance, one cannot avoid the magnetic draw of Benicio/Che's effortless and unswerving charisma, and I daresay even the most pacifist among us feels, almost unconsciously, a certain disrespect toward the leader of the Bolivian communist party (played by Lou Diamond Phillips, a yuppie sweater slung across his absurdly natty outfit as he trudges through the jungle to meet with Che) who refuses to endorse an armed revolution.

The script is startling in its utilitarianism. It hasn't got a funny moment. It has no small talk in it, except early on at a Cuban party, shot very much like it might have been in an early-70s docustyle (aka Medium Cool or the Candidate or fill in your favorite Robert Altman film) where the director gets all the period details right in costume and setting then wanders around listening in on what folks are talking about. Other than that, nobody says anything that's not about the matter at hand, which is usually something like what will we eat tonight? will we pay them for the pig or just take it? where is the ambush set? where can we cross the river safely? we need medicine. Do the villagers trust us? can we trust them? how can we bolster morale? and that may be a pretty fair depiction of jungle guerrilla warfare.

This project was originally slated for Terrence Malick to direct (a human who I sometimes in giddier moments think I love over all others, unless you count Mr. Spock as a real person). Soderbergh gives a few tips of the hat towards the other director in some moments of gorgeous nature cinematography (a shot straight up at overhead trees took me back to that brilliant final shot of the New World, and one from above of water reacting to soldiers wading through it might have been lifted directly from the Thin Red Line), but you'd never mistake this for the Malick version. For one thing, the inimitible Terrence tends to take the bones of history, dissemble them, and let them resettle in new and interesting shapes as he shoots. This one feels more structured by events as they have been set down in The Stone Tablet That Is History. (Please note: I do not mean that is a bad thing. I enjoy the playing-fast-and-loose-with-history only when it is a mad, visionary virtuoso like Malick doing the playing.) Also, although the jungle is a major player, here is not that strange and wonderful Malickian sense of man, ants, tree-limbs and musk-oxen being equal parts of one and the same vast and mysterious entity.

So much for what it's not. What Soderbergh DOES give us is a story intriguingly told via almost random but chronological dips into the daily lives of these soldiers, in short pieces with little attention to follow-up, scenes edited tersely but without sacrificing breathing space. And, of course, he gives us the preternaturally photogenic Benicio del Toro (I've always thought that Johnny Depp would love to look like del Toro; lose the obstacle of his extreme prettiness without losing photographability). The bulk of the film is done in medium or long shot with an apparently populist view to avoiding an overemphasis on the man himself, so when we finally get a sustained closeup (during an asthma attack about 2/3 of the way down the road), he is almost hypnotically fascinating to watch, a godsend and a revelation. During those final, quieter scenes of imprisonment, I found myself wishing for a different film, one in which I could spend more quality time with Che... Although, in retrospect, I think it's more time with Benicio I'm really looking for, and that, I'm happy to say, will soon be satisfied when the long-salivated-for Wolf Man movie comes out.