Che

We tried to sit through all 4 hours and 37 minutes of Che tonight after a martini and dinner. I was willing to stay, but my husband, a veteran of combat, could not bear another minute. As soon as the word "intermission" came onto the screen, he was out of there.

I don't know if it's fair to critique a film having seen only half of it, even if the half was two hours and forty five minutes long. Che is based upon "Reminiscenses of the Cuban Revolutionary War" by Ernesto Che Guevara, the Argentine doctor who joined Fidel Castro and at the age of thirty defeated Batista, the corrupt leader of mafia-dominated Cuba.

Benicio Del Toro looks eerily like Che, and watching him on screen, his moody integrity, his righteousness, his belief in revolution, his discipline, is fascinating. Del Toro won best supporting actor for his work in Traffic in 2001, and his cinema personas are varied and subtle. My problem with Che is not Del Toro. It's with creating an icon who is too opaque to be real in any sense. Although the scenes where Che can hardly breathe because of his asthma are truly breathtaking, and at times, I believed I could smell him, because of the hardship of living and fighting under cover in the countryside, who was Che remains elusive.

Why did Che join the Cuban revolution? For those of us who read the book or saw the film "The Motorcycle Diaries," we know that this brilliant yet restless doctor was radicalized when he traveled through Latin America. But there is no explanation, no insight into his character in the film Che to inform the audience about Che pre-revolution. That is a flaw, a big flaw.

I liked the switching back and forth between the battles of the revolution and a series of interviews, speeches, and events surrounding Che's visit to New York City in December 1964. Those New York scenes are in black and white and done in cinema verite, contrasted with the sprawling color of the battles for independence in Cuba. Watch for the cars in Cuba. They are what we think of when we think of Cuba.

There is no sex. There is no humor. In one interview with Steven Soderbergh, he said that it wasn't fun on the set. He was terrified of anyone getting hurt because of all of the explosives. However, the cinematography, Peter Andrews, is stunning and the structure of the scenes, despite the monotony of the battles and the poverty, worked to keep my interest. Obviously, it didn't keep my husband's.

I don't know if I will go back for Part Two. We did see the play "School of the Americas" written by Jose Rivera, the screenwriter for the film "The Motorcycle Diaries." It was a production during the 2005-2006 season for Labyrinth Theater, and it was grueling in its detail about the capture and death of Che. I suspect that Soderbergh will be even more grueling in his portrayal of Che's capture, interrogation, and assassination in 1967 in a one-room school house in the jungles of Bolivia.

I was looking forward to a scene when Che and Fidel triumphantly enter Havana in victory, but learned that it just doesn't happen. I doubt I will go back for more fighting in the Bolivian jungles this time.Of course, we won't in our lifetimes know what really happened, since fifty years afterwards, the history of the Cuban Revolution remains shrouded in histories that are still too self-serving to be truthful yet.