I debated about whether or not I would review this film. Keep in mind, I do not (at this time) review documentaries, mostly because I think approaching something that tries to accurately capture real history – or accurately capture a real person’s perspective on his/her history – is perhaps too great a task for me. Assessing historical accuracy has never been my forte, and I I’m not sure how to review a story if that story is an unchangeable matter of fact. Still, this movie is clearly not a documentary – it’s a fascinating “what if” movie that shows what a young, idealistic, quickly-evolving Che Guevara might have been like on his road trip through South America. When viewed as such, it’s really quite fascinating.
This film breaks one of the rules of storytelling in a way, which polarizes the audience in terms of strength, effect, and maybe even aesthetic distance depending on what knowledge of Che the viewer has at the onset. Generally, movies are very focused on set-ups and pay-offs, always making sure that every moment the audience sees will make the following scenes (and/or the previous scenes) more meaningful. This film, however, is designed as a sort of prologue or prequel to the infamy of Che Guevara, so the set-ups for the irony, and arguably for the importance of each scene, are in all in the knowledge that the viewer supposedly has of what Che would become. Fortunately, because I saw this movie in a film class, I was informed of Che’s legacy, controversy, and infamy, so I really enjoyed the movie. However, had I not known who Che is, I would not have been able to enjoy the movie nearly as much – perhaps I would have hated it. While I do think that this is a fun story that succeeds at opening up one’s mind to new ways of looking at history and the world, I must withhold my praise to some extent because the movie works best as a supplement to a separate story that the audience is left to figure out for themselves.
Still, after a tiny bit of research, this is a really different kind of road trip comedy that can be really enjoyable.
