Che: The Man behind the Shirt

This is your chance. If you’ve seen college students and middle-age hippies wearing T-shirts that says “Viva la Revolucion,” and wondered what the deal is with beret-wearing man, this movie may give you a glimpse at story of the radical. Or you begin to nod off halfway through.

The 2009 winter season has been a time for great films, and I’m not sure if Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brokovich, Traffic) expected the film to turn out more Oscar-worthy, but I know I did. The hardest part of viewing this film wasn’t the runtime which is four hours and 17 minutes long (Titantic-style torture, except at least I loved that movie and Leo is smokin’ hot!)  The reality is, I wanted to know more about Che in a lot less time which a great director should be able to do.

Benicio del Toro (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Usual Suspects) plays Ernesto “Che” Guevara, a Cuban revolutionary who believed in Marxism and the rise of the proletariat. Che was eventually killed by Bolivian authorities in 1967 but no one can say that he’s not a controversial figure in history. Was he a hero? What he a killer? Is he a timeless inspiration or just a piece of historical trendiness? I wanted to be forced to ask these questions myself by learning about the man behind the myth, where he came from, what he believed in and what he truly cared about? But this was not Soderbergh’s direction or goal.

This is not necessarily the fault of the film. I understand his choice. It’s like learning something in high school. You are given a textbook that takes you chronologically through the who, whats and wheres. If a teacher does his/her job correctly, a student will feel inspired to to learn more outside of the classroom because it almost impossible to give a general history of a person or a battle and tell every little detail. It’s like saying, learn about the rise and fall of the Roman Civilization in one three hour film. What parts would you keep and what parts would you leave out? It’d be hard to choose right?

The first part of the film depicts the Cuban revolution. It leaps backwards and forward in time as it shows us an embolden Che leading revolutionaries to overthrow Batista in ‘57 as well as an New York interview in ‘64 when he met with the United Nations. The intensity and depth of the storytelling is striking, but more importantly in this half is that air of victory. As I watched it, it was almost as if I could hear it, smell it and feel it.  This only made me want to know more about what happened to this famed man. However, we skip ahead many years in the film, and I realize I’ll never really know the all of Che. In “Guerilla,” we’re shown his failure as Castro’s government begins to turn into a dictatorship, and he, can’t achieve what he’s brutally fought his life, to repeat the success saw in part one in Bolivia. It feels a lot like the first half of the movie in action but with a different undertone.

On the plus side, both Benicio del Toro and Damian Bichir, who plays Castro, bring a truth, reality and fire to their roles, and they make you forget their actors and begin to envision them as the infamous men they played.

When it comes to the film, it’s more that what I wanted is not what I got, and sometimes even something good can disappoint. When this movie was shown at the Cannes Film Festival, many debated whether it would be broken up into two movies “The Argentine” and “Guerilla’ as it was filmed or if it would be combined and shaved down. Apparently neither was done which might be the true detriment to the film. The film plays more like a  history lesson and less like a in-depth look at who Che really was. For some it will be enough, and for others like me, you’ll walk out after four hours wanting more. (Never a good sign.) At least, the film was well done overall with great cinematic choices and a fantastic score. There’s no doubt that many will stand in line to learn about the man behind the T-shirt, and I can’t blame them.