Beginning with this column, Cinema Retro's David Savage will be reporting from the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. In his first review, he critiques a new film about the cult of Che Guevara - and the irony of how a revolutionary who represented a brutal, totalitarian regime has somehow become a symbol of freedom and independence.
TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL 2008
Strike a Pose: Hasta La Chevolution
No one hates a sourpuss at a party more than me, so I regret to file
my inaugural report from the Tribeca Film Festival (technically a pre-festival
screening) on such a cheerless note and with windless sails. Maybe I chose
poorly from the films on offer before the festival gets underway on April 23rd,
but if what I saw last night, Chevolution, is evidence of what it takes
to get a documentary into one of the most high-profile film festivals in the
world, then all I can say is that the bar has been lowered so far that one need
only step over it.
Piquing my interest was the following synopsis: How did the iconic
image of Che Guevara end up on beer bottles and bikinis? This inquiry into the
ethics and aesthetics of appropriation investigates how the enduring symbol of Cuba's
revolution skyrocketed to fame and was ultimately devoured by its own worst
enemy: capitalism. Great! Sounds provocative and timely. I was all ready to
see a well argued thesis against branding and the banalization of
once-meaningful symbols, and even, I hoped, a useful corrective against the
radical-chic cult of the Marxist assassin and Argentine revolutionary Che
Guevara. No such luck.
What starts out to be a fairly absorbing investigation into the
history one of the most reproduced images in the history of photography -- that
being Cuban photographer Alberto Korda's black and white capture of the young
guerilla warrior at a funeral for the victims of the ship explosion in Havana's
harbor in 1960 -- instead turns into a dreadfully shallow homage to the
guerilla warrior himself, leaving countless stones unturned, a parade of
talking heads unchallenged, and a litany of problematic statements floated over
our heads like methane-filled balloons. Co-director Trisha Ziff even sees fit
to interview herself at one point with this helpful amplification: "He's a
superstar, and a superstar with a message," she explains to her own
camera. What message that is, exactly, she never explains, which serves as a
telling bookend to this entire, pointless film.
On the surface, the directors, Ziff and Luis Lopez, invite our indignation
over how an honest portrait of a communist revolutionary ended up becoming a
global brand at the service of capitalism. Fine. Irony noted. But another layer
of irony left unexplored, like much in this documentary, is how the portrait of
Guevara, Castro's collaborator (and expendable pawn) in creating the most
repressive, blood-soaked, totalitarian regime in the Western Hemisphere came to
be the symbol of freedom and revolt against oppression. Whom did he set free,
exactly? Care to take that up with the Cuban expatriates in Miami? (They don't, except for one. See
below.)
But Ziff and Lopez, to their credit, trace the destiny of Korda's
(uncredited until 1980) photograph, from its origin as one of two frames shot
by the fashion photographer and tucked into a file cabinet where it lay
undisturbed for several years, to its theft by wealthy publisher Feltrinelli of
Milan, whose publication of the image in his magazine sparked its dissemination
in countless other magazines and newspapers worldwide. It was then
"appropriated" (unauthorized) by an Irish graphic artist who created
the now-iconic posterization of Guevara's face into a two-tone silkscreen,
which in turn unleashed its use by countless self-styled rebel groups worldwide
in the '60s and '70s (notably in Paris in '68), further diluting its original
content to mean revolt in general, which led to its co-opting in the '80s
through the present day as a chic expression, Warhol-style, of dissent. Korda,
who died in 2001, never saw one red cent for the multitude of uses of his
famous photograph. His daughter, Diana Diaz, interviewed throughout the film,
now heads of the estate of her father and is the exclusive licensor of the
photograph and goes after unauthorized uses of the image.
The various vox populi interviews the directors conduct with the hip
t-shirt wearers and tattoo-bearers reveal the average level of familiarity
with Guevara, which usually goes something like this: I don't know much about
him, but I believe in what he stood for, you know, living and dying for freedom
and justice and stuff. Other interview subjects range from well known actors
such as Gael Garcia Bernal (who speaks of the cherished "bedtime
story" of Che Guevara in his family) and Antonio Banderas, to biographers,
art historians and photographers who knew Korda. One recurrent talking head,
Jon Lee Anderson, draws increasingly ludicrous parallels between Guevara to
certain mythological figures ("he was the face of Icarus"), even to
Jesus. Near the end of the film, much is made of the “Christ-like” comparisons
between the body of Guevara in newsreel footage after he was killed by the
Bolivian army and cross-cuts with the gruesome crucifixion statues of Jesus in
Latin American churches. By the end of the film, the directors seem to have
abandoned every last pretense of objectivity and are caught up in a feverish
exaltation of Guevara as a martyr.
Revere him or revile him, you don't undertake a documentary on one of
the most controversial figures in political history without airing a few
counterpoints to your main thesis, and you don't gloss over the less savory
chapters of your subject's life because you think it might offend the delicate
sensibilities of your audience. Guevara's formation of death squads, sent to
exterminate deserters and dissenters, go unremarked upon. The forced labor
camps that housed gays, intellectuals, poets and, eventually, people with AIDS,
ditto.
Ziff and Lopez, holding their noses, dutifully give two dissenting voices
brief soundbytes of camera time: one a Bolivian senator and the other a
20-something, first-generation Cuban-American. The latter speaks more
eloquently and succinctly than anyone in the entire film. I'd be willing to bet
money that he was pulled in front of the camera after the directors suffered
the fury of his parents. Nonetheless, he coolly lays out the case for wearing
the Che t-shirt (again, I paraphrase): "If you truly believe that a
repressive regime that imprisons people who disagree with their government,
denies people freedom of the press and the choice to think and speak for
themselves, and is responsible for the murder of thousands of people, is something
to be admired, then this man is your hero and this is the t-shirt for
you." This prompted scattered applause in the theater, the only applause
during the entire film.
-David Savage
For an excellent article on questioning the cult-icon status of Che Guevara,
read Paul Berman's "The Cult of Che," originally a response to Walter
Salles' Motorcycle Diaries (2004) and its standing-ovation reception at
that year's Sundance Film Festival. Slate online URL: http://www.slate.com/id/3137/
