Steven Soderbergh's biopic is arid, peculiar but gripping, writes Donald Clarke
NOBODY HAS ever accused Steven Soderbergh of being a warm film-maker. National stereotypes are always dangerous, but it comes as no surprise to discover that this disciplined, analytical, cautiously ironic director is of Swedish stock. His films are, after all, made from neatly trimmed pine.
So what has the ice king made of the most iconic revolutionary of the 20th century? Released in two parts (the second arrives here next month), this deeply peculiar epic examines key incidents in the life of the Argentinian doctor who came to be known as Che Guevara. The first part intersperses restaged footage of Che speaking at the UN in 1964 with examinations of his role in the Cuban revolution five years earlier.
This is still incendiary material. Surely Steven will finally discover some fire in his belly?
Not a bit of it. You could view Che: Part One as a stylistic complement to Gillo Pontecorvo's great The Battle of Algiers (1966). Whereas that film allowed revolutionary zeal to fire up the pounding music and energise the breathless editing, Soderbergh keeps his distance (literally) from the characters and asks us to think hard before giving in to empathy.
Far from being embedded with the revolutionaries, the camera
sits back from the action - no decadent, bourgeois close-ups for you, comrade - and works hard at not getting in the way. The excellent score by Alberto Iglesias is restrained, the dialogue is almost entirely in Spanish, and the characters, despite the accumulating mayhem, exhibit weird degrees of sang froid throughout. There is no story bar the story of the revolution.
Yet Che: Part One is undeniably gripping. A large part of the credit must go to Benicio del Toro, who makes a gorgeous enigma of the central character. Occasionally crippled by bouts of asthma, del Toro's Che appears touchingly flawed and human throughout. The film doesn't pay much attention to the atrocities that this revolutionary (like all revolutionaries) must have sanctioned, but it doesn't make the mistake of supposing that he may have been a superman either.
By taking the decision to direct a four-hour diptych named Che, Soderbergh has, of course, made it clear that he feels his protagonist was a man of substance. But this hypnotically composed film is too arid to qualify as hagiography. It is too solemn to be mistaken for a conventional biopic.
What Soderbergh has delivered, complete with endless battles and plenty of sodden jungle, is a rather magnificent approximation of a cinematic tabula rasa. Take the material and make of it what you will.
