I was apprehensive about Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” before seeing it
yesterday, mostly fearing a Hollywood director’s attempt to “interpret”
Che. While I didn’t expect anything as outrageous as the 1969 “Che!”
starring Omar Sharif as Che and Jack Palance (!) as Fidel Castro, which
Roger Ebert described as having a dramatic level that “aspires toward
comic strips,” I wondered what the director of “Oceans 11″ might
possibly have to say about a revolutionary socialist.
As it turns out, “Che” is a serious and honest attempt to represent at
least one aspect of Che Guevara’s career, namely the guerrilla fighter.
The movie is divided in two parts, one based on “Reminiscences of the
Cuban Revolutionary War” and the other on the Bolivian diary. As a sign
of Soderbergh’s bona fides, he used Jon Lee Anderson as a consultant for
part one. Anderson’s biography of Che Guevara is quite good, up until
when the revolutionaries begin governing. Anderson was happy to write
about Guevara’s heroism in battle, but much less willing to give credit
to the socialist experiment that continues to the present day, its
fiftieth anniversary.
It should be added that Soderbergh has serious ambitions as a
film-maker, despite projects like “Oceans 11″ that pay the rent (and
which obviously he has fun making.) I strongly recommend “Bubble“, a
technically innovative murder mystery involving blue-collar workers in
the rust belt. Another Soderbergh film that critics regard as
high-minded and daring is “Traffic”, a policier about the Mexican drug
trade into the U.S. that was based on the British TV series “Traffik”
that focused on the connections between Pakistani heroin and British
users. As I tried to explain in my review of “Traffic”, Soderbergh
failed to deliver the kind of subtle class analysis found in the British
teleplay. Indeed, despite all the critical raves, he appeared happy to
make what turned out to be an elevated version of Miami Vice” as this
excerpt from my review would make clear.
Soderbergh is quite open about his desire to flatter law
enforcement agencies in the USA, while simultaneously maintaining a hip
“war on drugs can not succeed” ‘tude. In a profile that appears in the
Jan. 3-9 Village Voice, Soderbergh states
“I didn’t want to come off like we had answers. The idea that some
silly filmmaker after two years could sort it out would be outrageous.
But there seems to be a huge vacuum in the public debate and I guess
this is one of the few times I felt a movie could actually help. The
funny thing is, everybody who sees it thinks it puts their point of view
across, and I was expecting exactly the opposite. We had a screening in
Washington for Customs, DEA, and the Department of Justice and they all
came out saying they really liked it. The following night, there was
some hardcore leftie NPR/PBS [!!!!] screening in L.A. and some guy
stands up and goes, ‘Thank you for making the first pro-legalization
movie.’ Then the other night, Commissioner Safir came to a screening and
said he thought it was the most accurate representation of law
enforcement he’d seen in a long time. And I have, you know, stoner
friends who are going, like, ‘Dude, yeah, great . . . ‘”
Since the “hip” movie-makers of today would never get caught dead making
“propaganda” films like “Battle of Algiers” or “Land and Freedom”, I
suppose that we can be grateful for what amounts to a positive image of
Che Guevara. The portrait that emerges from Soderbergh’s epic is that of
a heroic, deeply idealistic and self-sacrificing revolutionary. One
scene stands out. As the guerrilla army is headed toward Havana in 1959
for the final assault on the old regime, Che (Benicio Del Toro) spots a
group of combatants in a fancy Chrysler convertible. He speeds ahead in
his jeep and after forcing them to the side of the road, orders them to
return the car to its owner, even if he was a Batista official. The
revolution must operate on different principles than the old regime,
including the need to avoid personal gain.
full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/steven-soderberghs-che/
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