Film Review: Che - The Argentine

Films which have been a director’s labour of love often don’t live up to the energy, passion and desire that have been poured into their creation. Martin Scorsese’s dream of creating a great American epic in ‘Gangs of New York’ resulted in a meandering, overlong effort that at times felt artificial and irrelevant. That film was carried by the eye-scratchingly good performance of Daniel Day Lewis who is worth seeing in ‘There Will Be Blood’, a brutal and much more effective dissection of the development of the United States.
But what of Steven Soderbergh’s great Cuban epic, ‘Che’? It is a film that has been split into two parts, indicating that the director is unwilling to make any compromises when depicting the life of the world’s most iconic individual, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara. After several false starts and over ten years of preparation, it was the determination of producer Benicio Del Toro that finally brought the story to our screens, and he plays the lead in the film. ‘The Argentine' is part one, following Guevara and Castro’s revolutionaries from their landing in Cuba in 1956. We watch how the guerrilla force is assembled, following them through early skirmishes, their jungle training and finally their march on Havana.
Del Toro portrays Che with a brusque manner and the ambitious values the man came to represent: humble doctor, impassioned leader, skilled tactician, and proud Cuban. His Guevara is wholly likeable, offering his hand in earnest introduction to every villager and recruit he encounters. Yet his principles are not to be compromised, and one of the most striking scenes of the film is when he executes a rapist with dutiful authority. Surprisingly, this is not disturbing in the way you would expect. Throughout the film, Del Toro’s depiction of the Commandante is so steeled with purpose that his cry of ‘patria o muerte’ is chillingly persuasive.
‘The Argentine' is timeless and compelling. Soderbergh often uses a handheld camera as we follow Guevara and his men through the jungle. Cuban drums accompany the snake of uniforms working through the dank green vegetation, giving these sequences an unexpected natural majesty. This action is interspersed with scenes around Guevara’s address to the UN in 1964, and their gritty, monochrome presentation works to ground the film with a sense of drama and history.
Thus, the film’s greatest success is the simplicity of its presentation. There is no attempt to encompass a whole life in some sort of limp Hollywood biopic but let the material speak for itself instead. Del Toro presents us with a man who is stunningly admirable, no matter how you judge the events of his life. There is no attempt to justify the revolution, nor are we asked to condone what Guevara does, only bear witness to the actions of a remarkable human being. It is more than just a Cuban story.
So if ‘The Argentine' could be compared to a Scorsese film, it would be much closer to the equally compelling ‘Raging Bull’. Boxer Jake LaMotta’s indomitable spirit can be seen in Guevara’s thirst for revolution, and no doubt his self-destruction will be similarly rendered in the second film, ‘Guerilla’. Both films are of a time, yet speak beyond it. Whether in the Bronx heat or the Cuban jungle, we are reminded of the passionate, ambitious and violent struggle of our existence.