Two revolutions for the price of one

After the success of The Motorcycle Diaries - an able and balanced telling of Ernesto "Che" Guevara's prerevolutionary travels - you have to wonder why anyone needs a four-and-a-half-hour depiction of Che's better-documented years.

Steven Soderbergh's (Ocean's Thirteen) Che, a two-part epic, got off to a rocky start at last May's Cannes Film Festival. Despite taking the Best Actor award for Benicio Del Toro's (Things We Lost in the Fire) stone-faced portrayal of the iconic revolutionary, the film faced a critical dismantling and an uphill battle to find distribution.

But now that the negative buzz has settled and Che has been trimmed closer to four hours, the comparisons to Entourage's fictional Spanish-language bomb, MedellÌn, have largely proven faulty. While the film hardly measures up to another widescreen epic that comes to mind, Lawrence of Arabia, Soderbergh has constructed a fascinating meditation on the technical side of revolution.

The title is almost misleading, especially Part One, in which Soderbergh's camera work (he works under the cinematographer pseudonym Peter Andrews) either denies the audience close-ups of Guevara or deliberately fragments his visage. Both halves (and they are unmistakably two different films) shy away from the motivations behind Guevara's career path and reserve judgment on his overall morality.

This could be seen as largely glossing over the subject. And while it's reasonable to assume Guevara is the subject (he is certainly the main character), the opening militarized map images of Cuba and Bolivia in each respective film suggests a greater focus on the land and the revolution itself.

While it would be unfair to go as far as to say the successful revolution yields the successful film and the failed revolution the failed film, Part One is indisputably the more engaging portion of Che. Framed within Guevara's 1964 visit to the United Nations (beautifully shot in a faux documentary black and white), the first half stretches from Guevara's first encounter with Fidel Castro (Demián Bichir, American Visa) in Mexico through the 26th of July Movement's defeat of Batista's army in Santa Clara.

Using Spain as a stand-in for Cuba, Soderbergh's super widescreen aspect ratio revels in the lush green jungles as Guevara wins the minds of his soldiers and hearts of the peasants. Outside of the principal players (Guevara, Castro and his brother, Raul) we are given very few individuals on whom to attach, which appears to have been the point.

Peter Buchman (both parts) and Benjamin A. van der Veen's (Part Two) screenplays probe the revolution as a living mechanism: how the soldiers shape up from impoverished farmers and peasants to one well-oiled machine capable of overthrowing the Batista dictatorship. It's all well and good in the Cuban portion of the tale, where everything builds up to the stunningly executed Santa Clara sequences.

The problem occurs in the quieter, slower Part Two. It's not quite a cinematic quagmire, and it's certainly admirable for being the much more difficult story to tell. But just as the disjointed Bolivian rebels failed to make their cause apparent to the poor masses they so desperately needed to win over, the filmmakers never convince us this is a group worth caring for.

Following a failed guerilla stint in the Congo, Guevara decides to make good on his promise to bring the Revolution to Latin America, eying Bolivia as the best candidate. With inconsistent supply lines from Cuba and fewer men to work with, Guevara's work is cut out for him.

Measured in subtitles announcing the days into the revolution, Part Two staggers through the Bolivian wilderness with considerably less action (the occasional skirmish lights up the screen) than Part One. It's the more reflective of the two, shot in a taller aspect ratio to emphasize the closer cut scenes.

Almost immediately, we got our previously denied full close-ups of Guevara's face and continue to sit by his side as the murderous idealist deteriorates in health and spirit until his eventual capture and execution. Given no simple task, Del Toro embodies Guevara (those more familiar with different Hispanic dialects may notice the issues with many of the accents), although the load proves a bit too much to carry without much support in the Bolivian half of Che.

But for all its imperfections, Che is the sort of chest-thumping cinema we rarely see anymore. Soderbergh's clinical filmmaking saps a lot of the emotion, but the film has its fair share of marvels that beg to be viewed on the largest screen available.

zherrm@gmail.com

RATING: 3.5 out of 5 stars