“I can ’t die now,” a friend said to me after watching Ché this week, “I haven’t done enough with my life yet.”
“I can ’t die now,” a friend said to me after watching Ché this week, “I haven’t done enough with my life yet.”
That’s exactly how Steven Soderburgh’s two-part movie series about the extraordinary life of South American revolutionary Ché Guevara makes you feel, especially in the context of post-apartheid South Africa.
Starring Academy Award winner Benicio Del Toro as Ernesto “Ché” Guevara, the films which have been screened at Roxbury Cinema over the past two weeks chart Guevara’s experiences from his decision
to join the Cuban revolution movement in 1956 to his execution in Bolivia in 1967.
Though pitched as a biographical film, the series is nothing like the usually rich and colourful biopic you might expect.
Solemn and gritty, the drama belies the glamorous portrait of Ché that we have become accustomed to seeing on posters and tshirts, and therein lies the appeal. Ché: Part One The Argentine documents
Guevara’s surge to power in the guerrilla movement in a way that exposes the infallibilities of a young and determined character in the struggle Guevara was 28 at the start of revolution and barely 30 when it ended.
The film doesn’t merely present a finished product of Guevara as a symbol of revolution, but sketches moments of weakness, vulnerability and conflict on the path to becoming the ageless face of counterculture.
Guevara constantly suffering from asthma attacks while traipsing through the jungle, as well as the irritation he shows when challenged by a diplomat while addressing the UN Assembly, reveals the human element of the icon that many don’t know of.
Part Two: Guerilla shows a different side of Guevara as “a struggling liberator” charting his futile attempts to deliver his blueprint for revolution to other parts of the world.
It takes a more sombre, yet compelling, look at the segment of his life where he grows into a reserved, but no less determined, character that realises that he isdestined to fail.
While the first part focuses on the charisma of a victorious leader during and after the revolution, the second disquietingly shows Guevara to be a meditative personality who realises the importance of his ambitions.
These themes, as my friend pointed out, relate directly to how South Africans in particular the youth of the country battle with contemporary issues in the aftermath of apartheid.
As a society that has come from revolution, the films remind you of the harshness suffered in struggles of the past and the need for youth to work, collectively and constantly, towards an improved future.
