Having made several popular moneymakers, Steven Soderbergh seems to regard it as his right to treat his audiences with defiantly uncommercial projects, like this two-part, four-hour-plus biopic of Che Guevara. The entire film is an extraordinary achievement even if the second part, which deals with Che’s abortive Bolivian mission and his capture and death, is much the most watchable.
In this first part, lasting just over two hours, Che (the striking Benicio del Toro) is a central figure you never really get to know as the Cuban revolution progresses through battles, speeches, training regimens and instructions from Castro (Demian Bichir). There is also black and white footage of Che’s New York visit in 1964 during which he made an incendiary speech to the UN.
If you discover a lot about the process and progress of the revolution, this is definitely not the cultural hero of myth, breathtakingly bathed in revolutionary light. Nor is he the Stalinist whose economic mistakes were legion. In fact, he is a figure around whom everything swirls but whose character remains curiously opaque.
Opens on 2 January
Che (Part 1)
Cert: 15
