Review of "Che: Part One"
This is a war film with a political backdrop. The action follows the revolutionaries’ landing in Cuba in December 1956, their trekking covertly through forests, taking of military bases, gaining support of the locals, street-fighting in Santa Clara to being days from taking Havana in January 1959. (The taking of Havana will come in Part Two).
The scenes of fighting are spliced with documentary-style ‘footage’ of Che’s 1964 speech to the UN and Che and Castro’s first meeting, strengthening this war film with an injection of revolutionary ideals. From Che and Castro’s first meeting at the start of the film we learn that the majority of Cubans live in poverty, that the Batista regime is corrupt and parasitical. Che’s speech to the UN shows the hypocrisy of the US at their door. It’s stirring stuff, enough for a lefty-minded viewer to cheer on the revolution, identify with the good guys and will on their victory.
The politics, however, are not interrogated much. Che is convinced that the only revolution possible in Cuba is an ‘armed struggle with popular support’ when the general strike fails to remove Batista. The question of mass struggle vs. guerrilla war is presented as a question of tactics heading towards the same goal. For us as socialists, the question represents crucially different approaches about how we want revolutionary change to come about, who should do it, and what kind of society results from it.
A film about a mass workers’ movement overthrowing the Batista regime would be dishonest to the events of the Cuban revolution and a totally different film. Ultimately, this compelling war/action film rests on the fact that the revolution was one of armed struggle. When the revolutionaries go into villages and the villagers surrender, they are presented as liberators from without. The film-maker wanted heroes, and is not going to question whether it would be better if peasants and workers were forming their own organisations and freeing themselves.
This film presents the essence of what the Cuban revolution is to so many, an iconic (rather than realistic) struggle. The heroism of armed combat, infused with revolutionary ideals, is what makes this an engaging war film, but differentiates the Cuban revolution from the kind of democratic workers’ revolution that should be a model for socialists.
Che - Stalinist as icon
I saw the film this week and I agree it's good cinema, but with the politics glossed over. At the end, in the flash back to Mexico City (1955) when Guevara first met Castro, Che agrees to join the July 26 Movement only if he can go on to make revolution in Latin America after Cuba. The film doesn't explain why he became a revolutionary (i.e. his experience in Guatemala, seeing the US-orchestrated coup first-hand) - but worse, it glosses over the sort of revolutionary he was. During the period covered by the film, he was unequivocally pro-USSR, supporting the tanks going into Hungary in 1956 and writing letters extolling Stalin (even after 1956). There are a few hints in the film of relations with the PSP - the Cuban Communist Party - but not much on Guevara's world view. However as Becky points out, no one watching the film could believe the Castroites made a workers revolution in 1958-59. They did overthrow a brutal dictator, which was a cause for celebration; what they replaced him with by 1960 was Stalinism - no kind of workers' freedom.
Paul