Directors
that make historical films face a unique challenge: how to
overcome the problem that the film’s events are
pre-determined? For instance, it wouldn’t have made sense for
James Cameron to release Titanic
telling people: You’ll have to wait
and see how it ends! since that
much is obvious. Instead, I think directors have two choices.
First, to present their protagonists as agents of historical
change ala Marx, sweeping obstacles aside. Or second, struggling
to reach destinies that, since it’s a historical film,
everyone knows are coming. Both approaches, I think, have
downsides.
The former risks turning the characters into
supermen, less individuals struggling to reach their goals, than
people fated to change things. The latter, meanwhile, risks
patronising the audience, asking them to pretend that an ending
everyone knows is coming in fact isn’t. In Titanic,
James Cameron sidesteps this problem by turning turning the ship’s
sinking into a backdrop for romantic mush. In Inglorious
Bastards meanwhile, Quentin
Tarantino plays a joke on his audience, ending his film with the
massacre of the Nazi elite. Both films, for me at least,
avoid the problem of historical subjects.
Steven
Soderbergh’s Che Part One,
meanwhile, is perhaps the best film I’ve seen of late that takes a
real stab at overcoming this issue. To do this, Soderbergh makes
the inevitable course of his film a tenet of his protagonist’s
character. Che behaves like a man driving fate. He might
tend a soldier’s wounds, or lead resistance against incumbent
dictator Fulgencio Batista, but in each moment he appears sure
of himself. It’s an interesting trick because, for me at
least, it turns Che from
a film about How does he take Cuba?
to a film about Tell
us more about the character of this man. (This
is kinda explicit from the title, I admit.) Soderbergh assumes
that his audience knows Che’s accomplishments, and aims to
shed light on this man that could do such things. In short, it’s
less about the destination, than the journey, maaan.
For
instance, there’s almost no banal chit-chat in this film. The
purpose driving Che defines each conversation. This
demonstrates astonishing strength of purpose, but
is also a little alienating. Che appears not to have a private self,
or just the ghost of one. Furthermore, Che’s belief in himself
as an agent of historical change, though justified, makes him appear
egotistical. He talks to other people, in particular the US
journalists and senators he meets, as though they’re not
there. It’s as though his purpose abstracts him from the rest of
the species.
To
be honest, this a film I struggled to sit through, at least until I’d
figured out Soderbergh’s aim. Having done so though, I’m looking
forward a lot to seeing the second half, and recommend others check
out the first part too. Hurrah!
