Steven Soderbergh’s Che: Part One is a movie I praised for its Rosselini-style approach to history, taking a controversial figure and presenting him in a seemingly fair and balanced way. Che: Part Two is evidence that while Soderbergh’s Che as a whole is an ambitious and lavish spectacle, it also happens to be a work that is inherently dishonest in nature due to the pretensions of its approach.
Che: Part Two depicts Guevara’s failed campaign to overthrow the Bolivian government, in hopes of installing a Castro-friendly regime. Soderbergh wisely avoids overt audience manipulation, a choice that would elude an inferior filmmaker like Motorcycle Diaries director Walter Salles. Taking a page from the Roberto Rosselini school of historical drama, Soderbergh made his CHE films absent of overtly manipulative dramatic technique. Nowhere in these films will you find sweeping musical cues, soliloquies from dying key players, or a traditional three act structure. Instead Soderbergh presents the characters in a matter-of-fact fashion that, if shot without an eye for composition, could pass for historical mumblecore.
On the surface, this approach seems fair, as it doesn’t build up its protagonist in an insulting way, however what Soderbergh depicts in front of the camera exposes his dishonesty as a storyteller, as the film presents Che Guevara in a way that damn near approaches Sainthood. As stated earlier, this depiction is not overt, Soderbergh and his star are much more subtle than the usual Hollywood hacks. Guevara is often depicted reading books whilst deep in thought, or helping cure peasants of disease, essentially the insipid depiction Guevara drew of himself in his own writings on his own exploits, many of which have been hilariously taken to task by his so-called revolutionary companions. It’s hilarious in the film when enemy soldiers are captured, Che treats them like his new best friends, it’s rare we see him behave in the contemptible manner that even the most honorable warriors must behave during battle. Che is a film that purports to be objective, when really it follows this historical master narrative set by Jon Lee Anderson, when any historian adventurous enough to have searched outside of Anderson’s book can tell you Che was essentially a murderous-yet-incompetent guerrilla who got lucky with his company in Cuba before failing hilariously and spectacularly around the world afterward after inflating his own ego in the public eye, eventually getting himself killed in Bolivia at the hands of a population that saw through his brand of bullshit.
Che: Part Two isn’t a film that’s brave enough to challenge Anderson’s narrative of history, it’s a movie that reads his nonsense as fact without bothering to challenge it, making Soderbergh’s overall effort a cinematic spectacle that should never be taken seriously beyond art-house entertainment a la Oliver Stone’s JFK.