31ª Mostra Internacional de Cinema

Jornal da Mostra

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STEVEN SODERBERGH’S RADICAL ‘CHE’

We calmly went to see CHE, by American Steven Soderbergh, on the last day of screenings, after hearing and reading lots of drivel about the film during the 61st Cannes Festival. Its four hours and 28 minutes of length passed smoothly, with images radically faithful to Brechtian distance dogmas. Therefore, radically impartial on the judgment of the myth Ernesto Che Guevara, with historical distance, more than 40 years after his untimely guerilla actions in the Bolivian jungle, and his tragic and early death at the age of 39.

Che was a living myth and exactly because of it, is he uncontestable. Even because he died young. Soderbergh gave birth to a classical film, untouchable. It would have been a pity if he had heard his ridiculous detractors who found his division in two parts and the length of the film too much. Americans who don’t learn with History and find it natural to find a world docile to their caprices, also complained in Cannes of the correct option of the film of being spoken in Spanish.
 
The film THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES, by Walter Salles, released in Cannes 2004, gains even more strength with this kind of sequel by Soderbergh, which cost 60 million dollars to its French producers, Wild Bunch. CHE, by Soderbegh, follows the myth during the first part of the film, called THE ARGENTINE, in his adherence to the revolutionary adventure of the brothers Fidel and Raul Castro from Miami to Cuba in the yatch of sad remembrance Granma. A sad memory because afterwards Granma became the name of the only monolithic newspaper until now allowed to be distributed in the Cuba that turned the revolutionary victory into another hereditary dictatorship with no freedom of expression. Among the advances of the guerilla commanded by Fidel Castro, the first part still includes the reflections and performances by Guevara in New York, with his excellent speeches in the UN and in the OAS.

For the new generations to know, Soderbergh reproduces in the second part what a trap it was for Che Guevara the option to reproduce the contagious and victorious Cuban model in the rest of Latin America. Historical evidence has showed that the Castro brothers wanted to get rid of the annoying Che, it is known. Before adventuring in Bolivia, where he was killed in1967, Guevara tried to spread his revolutionary trademark in Africa, in Congo. His reasoning for social justice is still catchy. “If I had more money”, said Soderbergh, the film would have three parts, “I would also make a film about the gap between the Cuban and Bolivian parts of the films”. It is a pity this money lacked, for Soderbergh’s model of cinema, without slips and space for melodrama, would certainly give more light and passion to this whole story.
 
The second part of CHE, called GUERILLA, follows the sad plunge of a sincere character, with his social justice ideals, but tragically wrong about the motivations of the miserable ones isolated in the Bolivian high lands. There is still the historical treachery of communist parties and their opportunist members, historical betrayers and against any insurgency.
 
More merit to Soderbergh’s CHE is in Guevara’s incarnation by Mexican Benicio del Toro. Along with the excellent acting, there is also the physical similarity of Mexican Demián Bichir in the role of Fidel Castro and Rodrigo Santoro as Raul Castro. Let’s expect the integrality of this great film will be kept. Soderbergh won the guerilla against conservative cinema models. We still have to win another one to take the masses of cinema enthusiasts to the theaters. And who wants to dive into this new passion, can start by Steven Soderbergh’s site: http://www.stevensoderbergh.net/

English version: Laura Rebessi

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