Sinewaya

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Steven Soderbergh’s second film on aspects of Che Guevara’s life, “The Guerrilla”, is an investigation, to the minutest detail, of the Comandante’s last battles in Bolivia in 1967. Stylistically, it is difficult to find fault in the film.

Its casting, acting and photography are spot on; the film’s desaturated color rightfully dictates the mood and portends the tragic ending that we all expect. By basing the film on the extensive reports of Guevara biographer and journalist Jon Lee Anderson, Soderbergh’s camera does not take a wider view; that is, it does not examine the context of Che’s foray into the Bolivian jungles.

It does not explain what compelled him to begin again what he thought he and Fidel Castro had done in Cuba less than a decade before. Nevertheless, the film is in sympathy with the man, and even with his struggles. For students of revolutionary struggles, the film instructs on lessons on guerrilla warfare (lessons, in fact, that were more clearly articulated by Mao Zedong in his writings on the subject).

Though those not steeped in radical politics may not yet completely understand Che’s personal and political motivations, the nobility shines through. They come out of the cinemas understanding that Che was heroic but (at the moment) incomprehensible.

They would need a different film altogether to make up for that. (Oct. 9 marks the anniversary of Che’s death in the hands of CIA-trained Bolivian army)

KR Guda


Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7JIkJDxbzU

Directed by Guillermo del Toro

Yesterday’s newspaper headlines in Manila, Philippines bannered the story about the arrest of Jovito Palparan, a favored former general of the past regime and one of the main implementers of a brutal counter-insurgency policy that took the lives of many civilians and terrorized communities in different parts of the country.

Palparan had been in hiding for almost three years.Palparan’s brutal methods, of course, is not a unique one in the country’s history of political repression. There had been many brutal military officials before. His is even less unique in world history.Brutal military men have been subject of many films, both documentary and narrative.

One of the most fascinating in recent years, though, is a film called the Pan’s Labyrinth, directed by a successful Mexican director of fantasy films, who’s had a successful Hollywood career so far, Guillermo del Toro.

But Pan’s labyrinth is his most acclaimed to date. It also has most resonance in politics and history.The film is actually about a girl named Ofelia who, with her pregnant mother, comes to live in a military camp of Franco’s army.

The camp is ruled by a Captain Vidal, an unabashed fascist who had empragnated Ofelia’s mother and awaits the birth of his unborn son. Vidal (a Palparan character in many ways) is the head of a unit tasked by Generalissimo Franco to crush the remaining rebels in the hills after their defeat in the Spanish Civil War.Vidal is the guerrillas’ executioner and torturer, employing brutal methods on enemies caught or civilians suspected of sympathizing with rebels.

Meanwhile, Ofelia is caught in her own world of fauns and fairies, of a mystical kingdom that awaits freedom with her return as “princess”. The film ends in a brutal juncture of imagination and reality. Ofelia, innocent and therefore unafraid of death, is pitted against the monster Captain Vidal whose brutality is matched only by the latter’s cowardice in the face of actual battle.

KR Guda

The film’s trailer on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqYiSlkvRuw

Photo: Captain Vidal meets Ofelia

Directed by Erik Poppe

First off: Juliette Binoche, how she moves and conducts herself in front of her subjects, is compelling as a conflicted conflict photographer.

The film itself is beautifully photographed. Despite being a story about a fictional war photojournalist, “A Thousand Times Good Night” is intensely personal.

But it gives the viewers a glimpse into the personal consequences of decisions journalists make on the field: when to put themselves in harm’s way, how to get the story right, how close enough to the action one can go so that her photos are “good enough”, as Robert Capa once put it. These decisions, ultimately, are political ones.

When Binoche’s Rebecca shares her work to her daughter and tells her why great misery exists in Africa (“[Because of] money. Multinational corporations and mining companies have these incredible deals with many of the governments of Africa.

They are raping those nations of their natural resources and none of that money goes back to those countries…”), she makes her political stand–and implies the reason why her personal and painful sacrifices are necessary in the first place.

KR Guda

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl4jDts4sB0

Steven Spielberg, 2005

As the aerial, and now ground, attacks on the Palestinian people in Gaza intensify today, we look at one of Hollywood’s efforts to address the Palestine-Israel conflict: Spielberg’s “Munich” (2005).

The film follows the formation of an Israeli hit squad tasked (clandestinely) by its government to hunt down and kill Arab “terrorists” suspected of being part of the murder of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics.

It takes on the viewpoint of Avner, the hit squad leader, who begins the mission as an earnest Jew who takes to heart what his mother tells him about Israel and their people: “We had to take it because no one would ever give it to us. Whatever it took, whatever it takes, we have a place on earth at last.”

Spielberg obviously believes this, and he built the characters upon a strong sympathetic base: Yes, Israel stands to lose its humanity. But in order to live, such ruthlessness was necessary.

In raising this point, Spielberg’s film loses some of its humanity, as it treats the other half of the conflict as nothing more than shadow puppets that animate the background of Avner’s odyssey.Avner, to be fair, does go through a crisis of conscience.

Gradually, as his mission unfolds, and the violence (and body bags) only escalating, Avner begins to question: is all these necessary? Was the task (of giving justice to Munich victims) accomplished? Why does the bloodshed continue?

In between raising these existential questions, Avner and his team launches heart-stopping missions. It is an action movie, after all. Soon, they become hunted, too.

Sadly, by the film’s end, the questions will have been unanswered. Avner remains tortured by his deeds, by Israel’s deeds, always looking over his shoulder for the shadows whose true nature the film refuses to reveal.

KR Guda