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Just finished watching Steven Soderberg’s two-part biopic of Ernesto “Che” Guevara.  (I “live-tweeted” my reactions here.)

Che: Part One juxtaposes the successful 1957-1598 Castro-led insurgency in Cuba with Che’s post-revolution visit to the United Nations, where he is received as a celebrity amongst Manhattan socialites and other Third-World diplomats.  Che: Part Two follows Che’s rather less successful attempt to bring the revolution to Bolivia. I won’t tell you how it ends. (Actually, I will.)

First, it’s no secret to anyone who has read my previous writing that I am not a fan of communism, and I am ideologically predisposed to not dig Che’s pop-cult status or feel any empathy toward his struggle. However, I like to think I am somewhat capable of appreciating good movies, regardless of their ideological content. For example, you can read my glowing review of the quite relevant 1962 masterpiece of pro-Castro propaganda I Am Cuba here. (Also relevant: my review of the “meh”  romance  The Motorcycle Diaries.) I also recently enjoyed the fascinating Baader Meinhof Complex, which is admittedly critical of the leftist German “Red Brigade” terrorist faction, although it does a good job of also depicting the youthful glamour of the movement.

I did not care for Soderberg’s Che — especially not the first part — for reasons primarily due to Soderberg’s stylistic approach, and secondarily its politics, which I found to be quite subdued, perhaps too much so.

It’s hard to say from watching exactly what Soderberg meant to accomplish with Che, largely because the style of the two movies is so austere that only rarely is there an opportunity for connection between the audience and the title figure. This approach particularly hampers Part One, as its depiction of Castro’s successful fomenting of rebellion throughout the Cuban countryside is so effortless that the movie utterly lacks tension.

While we do get a glimpse of Che’s evolution from a slightly bumbling, green asthmatic rebel into a feared commandante, Soderberg shows no interest in relating the secret of Che’s success nor the source of his later reputation. Likewise, Che chooses not to frame any narrative of the revolution. Castro insists at the beginning that his planned revolution will gain momentum in rural areas, and it does so with few obstacles, but tactically the effort is left a mystery. Soderberg doesn’t even attempt to characterize Batista’s enemy army until the very end, at which point they are demoralized and eager to surrender.

Just like the movies’ narrative, Soderberg’s characterizations of the Che and the other rebels is so ascetic, that unless one is presumably already empathetic toward leftist insurgency, there’s little cause to mourn their casualties or celebrate their victories. Che is a complete enigma from start to finish, as he quietly marches through the jungles toward Santa Clara.

Part Two fares better, primarily because its subject matter is rife with the kind of conflict absent from Part One: as Che attempts to carry on the revolution by leading a dysfunctional band of guerillas into Bolivia, they not only find sterner resistance from the Bolivian army, but sympathetic politicians offer no support, and the poor peasants in whose name Che professes to fight, reject both the violent nature and ideological content of the revolution. The answer to the question, “What if they gave a war, and no one comes?” is that you find informants everywhere, your rebels demoralized and defeated, and yourself face down riddled with bullets on the floor of a rundown Bolivian shack.

With both movies assembled as a dispassionate series of chronological events, the best scenes are the few, remote moments when Soderberg lets his camera close on on a feeling, rather than an action. Batista’s demoralized soldiers at the end of Part One, Che’s rebels discovering the size of the encroaching Bolivian army, and Che’s intimate conversation with the Bolivian soldier assigned to guard him. The rarity of these moments make them profound, but the bloodless rest of the film has drained them of real impact.

It’s almost as if Soderberg felt the need to atone for the excesses of his Hollywood movies, like the bubblegum Oceans series, and at the same time was leery of romanticizing or sensationalizing a controversial historical figure.  Part One amounts to little more than a mildly polemic nature hike.

It must be said, that in many ways the narrative of the movie is utterly, dourly Marxist, just like Che himself. Individuality is never emphasized. The rebels are a faction of green-cloaked faceless, impersonal tools of the revolution. The enemy is faceless and flavorless. There is a polemic to be followed to its resolution, a system to install, with a distaste for the decadence of feeling or style. The personal needs of man are not to be bothered with.

This deep narrative Marxism aside, the politics of Che lie mostly in what is omitted. We see Che as a serious Marxist, we see Che as a celebrated critic of U.S. Imperialism, we see Che as a noble rebel who protects the poor in theory and practice, we see Che as a caring doctor, we see Che as a tender father. These moments do not feel exaggerated, but there is only a rare glimpse at the controversial side of Che, who by most accounts was in charge of executing political prisoners during the early days of Castro’s regime, and who is reported to have taken specific delight in executing dissidents, homosexuals and religious leaders, and is even accused of torturing children. Conveniently, the brutality attributed to Guevara and Castro falls in the narrative hole between the two movies. We do see Che command the swift execution of a rapist, severely mitigating his only depicted act of violence as a just cause. Soderbeg can deal his hand with the straightest of faces because he’s already loaded the deck in every conceivable way.

So what do we make of Che after spending 4.5 hours with the Soderberg treatment? Is there any sense of the pop icon plastering hipster T-shirts today? Not really. We see a serious rebel who coasted to victory with Castro, who built up a mysterious bad-ass rep despite being mostly quiet and noble, and once left to his own devices failed ineptly to lead a revolution nobody wanted.

The parallel structure of the two movies begs for some kind of directorial point of view, which is wholly absent. Why did the Cuban revolution succeed but the Bolivian campaign didn’t? Was Castro the secret ingredient? Was the disaffection the rebels tapped a local phenomenon that sputtered on the continent? Was Che ultimately just a dullwood who looked cool in a photo but lacked a real life quality of inspiration?

These questions are not so much provoked by Soderberg’s movie, but mulled over in the boredom of enduring yet another scene in the jungle where nothing is happening.

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