Toward the end
of "The Argentine," the first half of Steven Soderbergh's epic-length,
narrow-focus biopic of Ernesto Ché Guevara, a sequence captures in miniature
how the revolution that overthrew Cuba's Batista government worked. Needing to
take out some soldiers holed up in a church, Guevara's men find a row of houses
connected to their target, then painstakingly knock down one wall after
another. It takes forever and leaves rubble where homes once were, but the
conviction that they're working for a greater good justifies both the
exhaustion and the collateral damage. Change comes one house at a time, except
when it doesn't. "The Argentine" portrays a relatively smooth-running
revolutionary machine, but the film's second half, "Guerilla," shifts the focus
to the stalled Bolivian revolution that ended in Guevara's capture and death in
1967. While Guevara hasn't lost his charisma or the conviction that Latin
America needed the brand of liberation he helped bring to Cuba, he can never
knock down the first wall.
In both halves,
Soderbergh emphasizes observation over ideology with an eye toward the mundane
details of life on the front lines of a revolution. Played as an
undemonstratively magnetic figure by Benicio Del Toro, the Guevara of Che is driven by his convictions at the expense of
seemingly every other consideration, and a bit lost when he isn't able to act
on those convictions. "The Argentine" alternates between the events of the
Cuban revolution and an early-'60s visit to the United Nations. Even wheezing
in the throes of an asthma attack, Ché appears more in his element in the
jungle than in the corridors of power, and as "The Argentine" builds toward a
triumphant climax, the U.N. scenes provide a reminder that every revolution has
to attend to the everyday business of restoring much of what it's overturned.
That's largely outside
of Che's concern, however, as is the
legitimacy of its hero's principles. Soderbergh portrays Guevara as a man who,
having seen the damage done by the powers running Latin America, is comfortable
only when working to topple the system. The film keeps a fascinated focus on
what it takes to stay committed to that aim. In "The Argentine," the slow
accumulation of details—Ché building an army, starting makeshift schools,
killing deserters, and spreading Castro's message of agrarian
reform—builds to a thrilling climax. In "Guerilla," that same attention
to detail takes the film slowly into nightmare, and finally, into a kind of
grace as an imprisoned Del Toro briefly explains his beliefs to his captors.
"Cuba is progressing," he tells them, balancing radical optimism with the
realism of what he's seen. By then, Soderbergh is more than four hours into a
movie whose length makes it a challenge, but also creates an immersion in the
frontline existence of its subject's life, a place filled with hope for a better
tomorrow, but where the constant requirements of stealth and survival kill
romantic idealism in its crib.