Over the last few days I’ve been able to watch Steven Soderbergh’s film, “Che,” starring Benicio Del Toro in the titular role (it’s at Blockbuster in a 2-dvd set). I am of the generation that knows Che Guevara primarily through the famous t-shirt image which is usually worn by folks whom you gather don’t really know much about him. He remains a kind of darling of the left just as he is scorned by many on the right. He was a Latin American (Argentine) revolutionary and Communist, most famous for the role he played as Fidel Castro’s Lieutenant in the Cuban revolution. Che’s cult status was sealed by his charismatic personality and, ultimately, his execution.
As a movie, the film is fantastic. It focuses primarily on Che’s activities in Cuba under Castro and his failed attempt at bringing revolution to Bolivia. Benicio Del Toro looks eerily like Che and does an astounding job depicting the controversial figure. I note as well that he served as one of the producers of the film. The scenery is stunning and convincing and the combat scenes have an understated quality that somehow make them seem more real. Furthermore, the depictions of Che’s mindset and rationales as well as of his interactions with the men he led in guerrilla warfare evoke sentiments of sympathy from the viewer.
Again, as a movie, it’s a pretty stunning, if overly-long, biopic. There are moments of jarring emotional poignancy and I daresay the movie causes a certain measure of introspection on the grand questions of life: human nature, justice, sin, virtue.
But history is a tricky thing, no? I believe it’s safe to say that the film glosses over Che’s less endearing traits, and it certainly glosses over (even while referencing) those executed at Che’s hand. The executions are mentioned, and even powerfully so by a young Bolivian soldier who mentions to Che that he, Che, had executed his uncle, but overall such notions are lost in a sea of appreciation for Che. Del Toro dedicated one of the awards he won for the film to Che himself, and it is safe to assume that the film is a hagiographic appreciation of a man who had blood on his hands.
Most tragically, I suspect that young folks who watch the film may come to believe that Communism is a compassionate movement of kind-hearted men who merely want “peasants” to be able to read and write and enjoy liberty and equality. History, of course, offers us all the shocking evidence to the contrary.
Che was a fascinating character, and it ought not be assumed that he did not believe in the cause he sought to advance (or that he was some demonic monster), but, in the end, Guevara contributed to a system that has brutalized untold millions of human beings.
At the end of the movie, a young soldier asks Che if he believes in God. “I believe in mankind,” Che responds. It is a powerful, honest, and terrifying moment, for the track record of Communism indeed reveals just what calumnies mankind is capable of.
A great movie. A very poor history lesson.