We have probably all heard the old canard that “everything is political”.  For Florentine philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli, absolutely nothing existed above politics.

Even Christian salvation itself, in Machiavelli’s day the sole prerogative of the Roman Catholic Church, was itself political.  One’s salvation depended on the blessing, and consequently the political favor of the Roman Church.  In a time when ‘mortal sins’ were commonly forgiven through papal indulgences sold to the highest bidder,  the idea of the political character of salvation had an eminently practical significance for Machiavelli.

In December, Criterion will put out Steven Soderbergh’s two-part anti-biopic “Che” on both DVD and Blu-ray.  In Soderbergh’s four hour epic on the ‘rock star’ Marxist revolutionary, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, we are forced to face this very same question of the ‘politics of salvation’.

Guevara is played effectively by Benicio del Toro, who executes his role with little or no affectation.  He gives us sentiment at times, but without sentimentality.  Everything is understated.  Del Toro plays Che as a man who leads while deliberately calling no unnecessary attention to himself.  Demian Bichir, who has made guest appearances on the Showtime series Weeds as a Mexican politician and drug lord, satisfactorily fills the role of Fidel Castro.

The film’s style is starkly realistic.  It projects to us from the perspective   of the guerrilla.  The scripts themselves are based on Che Guevara’s own diaries, both in Cuba and Bolivia.  We are often uncertain what exactly is happening. The battles between the national armies and the guerrillas generally have uncertain outcomes.  Victory from the perspective of the guerrilla is living to fight another day.

This is primarily a Spanish language film.  The Che character seems to refuse to speak English on principle, as if it would be effectively bowing to American cultural imperialism.  In scenes with an American interviewer, we are given the impression that Che understands the English she is speaking, and is capable of responding in English in kind, but chooses to let his personal translator speak his English for him.

A modern day armed prophet to some, a world class troublemaker and devil to others, the very creation of a feature film on Che Guevara, especially one of such soaring artistic ambition, and by an A-list Hollywood director like Steven Soderbergh, was bound to be divisive from its premiere.

Should the life of Che Guevara be praised?  Should the life of Che Guevara be condemned?  From this initial value judgment the political die is cast and sides are taken, ‘for’ and ‘against’.

While Guevara’s fans will undoubtedly be more pleased with this film by Soderbergh than his foes, with anti-Castro Cuban-American leaders in Miami condemning the movie as propaganda before its premiere, the film does not in fact take political sides.

Instead, the value that the film attributes to Guevara is the example he provides of the ‘revolutionary life’ personified, specifically, the life of a man who chose to dedicate the last decade of his short life to the waging of guerrilla war across the world.  Even during the intervals that he does not spend as a guerrilla commander in the field, he is focused on planning or training for the next revolution, the next war.

In fact, the historical significance of Guevara and the Cuban Revolution are tangential to the thrust of the film.  The specific details of ‘whom’, ‘what’, ‘where’, and ‘why’ are peripheral to the central focus of ‘how’, i. e., how a revolutionary armed struggle succeeds, and in contrast, how it fails.  The fact that the main character is named “Che Guevara” is far less important than the visual documentation of the life of the guerrilla commander in the field that it depicts.  Guevara’s political ideology or even the idea of Marxism, is hardly mentioned.

In any case, the specifics of Guevara’s politics are not important for the purposes of the film. Because of its unusual length, the film has been divided into two parts.  Part One, The Argentine, primarily concerns the rebel war against the Cuban Batista regime, before the New Year’s Revolution in 1959.  The focus on the rebel soldier’s life in the field is accompanied by regular voice overs of a 1964 interview that Guevara granted to an American journalist, as well as Che’s visit to the United Nations and speech to the General Assembly that same year, in the capacity of Cuban Ambassador.

Part Two, The Guerrilla, is even more focused on the life of the rebel field commander, this time in Bolivia.  While Part One portrays the successful revolution, Part Two represents the failed one.  In both cases the most important lesson is the same: winning depends on the support of the peasants, which in turn depends upon the leader’s success in effectually communicating his vision to his followers.  Those who know what they are fighting for will defeat those who do not.

The movie reminds me of a classical tragedy.  Like a Shakespearean History, we have the story of the dethroning of an unpopular King (Fulgencio Batista) by an ambitious Nobleman (Fidel Castro).  As in classical theater, there are no substantial surprises for the audience.  We all know what is going to happen.  The hero wins the first war, loses the second, and dies in the end.  Che’s tragic flaw is his stubbornness.  The same indomitable will which catapulted him to worldwide attention also leads him to his ultimate demise.  Of course, in Shakespeare and classical theater the story would focus on Batista, the deposed King, and Castro, the newly crowned King, and Che would be his sidekick, Castro’s Horatio or Mercutio.

Still, while the film itself does not pass value judgments on the relative merits of Che’s Cuban and Bolivian revolutions, respectively, the viewer will be provoked to ask questions beyond the work’s relatively narrow thematic focus.  For example, Che does not explore Guevara’s inner life or inner struggle’s.  It makes no attempt to explain why he came to choose this revolutionary life for himself.  These are all givens. Nevertheless, the viewer will inevitably come to ask these questions him or herself.  What is it that really motivates this guy, behind this crusade for ‘justice’ he is fighting?  Why did this man not make a life for himself as a statesman in Cuba with his wife and five children, after the Revolution?

Don’t expect any such questions to be substantially addressed in this film. What insights we do get come from the translated voicer-overs from the 1964 American’s interview.  The Che character does tell us during one of these voice-overs that in his estimation “the revolutionary life” is the best life, the ‘highest calling’ for a human being.

He tells us that at some point during the early stages of the Cuban civil war, in 1957, he truly became a guerrilla, and that once that happened, there was no turning back.  He had found his calling, and now he would dedicate the rest of his life to pursue this calling with all of his all passion, all his will, and all his intellect.  Everything else in his life was to be subordinate to this life of the guerrilla revolutionary leader, who effectually imparts his vision to his followers, and inspires them to engage in an armed struggle to defeat and replace the “unjust” regime.

In response to the question,  ”What is the most important quality of the revolutionary”,  the Che character responds tersely, “amor“, love.  ”A true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.  Love of humanity; love justice; love of truth.  It is impossible to conceive of an authentic revolutionary without this one quality”.

This question of the ‘best life’, of the ‘highest calling’, has a long history in Western literature.  Socrates argued that the philosophical life was the highest calling.  For Alexander the Great, and Julius and Augustus Caesar the highest calling was the emperor’s life, to have one’s word establish the law for the people of the world, to be worshiped as a god.  For the Biblical writers the highest calling was the ‘prophetic life’, the life of the prophet.

Ernesto “Che” Guevara in the American Divine Comedy

Dante Alighieri wrote his Divine Comedy after being permanently exiled from his home city of Florence, by his political enemies.  Like the Anti-Castro Cubans in Miami, Dante ended up on the losing side of a civil war.  He never returned to his beloved Florence, and  famously exacted a kind of literary revenge in writing his Divine Comedy, immortalizing his worst political foes in various levels of the Inferno of Hell.  Some two hundred years before Machiavelli, the greatest Florentine poet was already toying with the ‘politics of salvation’ in his magnum opus.

When the American Divine Comedy is written, who will share in Il Paradiso, who will be patiently waiting in Il Purgatoria, and who will be damned to Il Inferno.  A Boondocks cartoon once joked that Ronald Reagan was ‘St. Peter’ in “white people’s heaven”, the Gipper himself standing at the pearly gates, checking out everybody’s credentials.  Where Che Guevara will stand is anybody’s guess.

We do know that at present in Latin America there are local Catholic parishes where Che Guevara is genuinely regarded as a Catholic Saint, Santo Ernesto.  Che Guevara’s transformation into a sanctified figure began immediately after his execution. Susana Osinaga, the nurse who cleaned Guevara’s corpse after his execution in La Higuera, reminisced that locals saw an uncanny physical resemblance to the popularized artistic portrayals of Jesus.  According to Osinaga, “He was just like a Christ, with his strong eyes, his beard, his long hair…  He was very miraculous…  They say he brings miracles.”

Erich Blossl, another eyewitness to the scene, and a German aid worker in Bolivia in 1967 was quoted by Knight-Ridder media corp: “His eyes were not the eyes of a dead man.  Wherever you went, his eyes followed you”.

In Bolivia, images of Che now hang next to images of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and pope John Paul II.  Additionally, columnist Christopher Roper observed that “in Bolivia, Che’s murdered body was now compared to John the Baptist”, while Reuters reported that in many homes, Che’s face competed for wall space with a host of Roman Catholic saints.

One local La Higuera poor peasant farmer, Manuel Cortez, who lived next door to the schoolhouse where Guevara was executed, was also quoted by Knight-Ridder: “It’s like he is alive and with us, like a friend.  He is kind of like a Virgin (Mary) for us.  We say, `Che, help us with our work or with this planting,’ and it always goes well… He suffered almost like Our Father, in flesh and bone.”

In contrast, the anti-Castro Cubans view Che as an arch-demon.  In Miami Beach, a few dozen protesters, mostly retitrees who had fled Cuba after the Castro takeover on New Year’s Day, 1959, protested the showing of Steven Soderbergh’s bio-epic.  ”The Jewish community would never allow any kind of film about Hitler like this to play here,” Abilio Leon, 65, told the Miami New Times. “It’s the same for us.”  A younger man walked past the theater wearing a Che t-shirt — but with Guevara’s image crossed out and marked with the words:  ”Cold Blooded Killer.”

Whatever your opinions on the matter, whether you view Che Guevara as ‘John the Baptist’ or ‘Hitler’, or somewhere in between, I strongly recommend Steven Soderbergh’s film.  Honestly, it’s not for everybody.  Many will be put off by not only its length and its Spanish, but also its frequent slow pace.  Others will be enthralled by the film, desiring to watch it again, in order to unlock a few more of its secrets.