On the trail of Dr Ernesto Guevara
If the premise is wrong, then it follows that the conclusion — and, of course, the full development — of the story is necessarily fallacious. The feeling of confusion soon evaporates, though, when La huella del doctor Ernesto Guevara, directed by Argentine filmmaker Jorge Denti, begins to unfold, with a voiceover manifesting a man’s compassion for the dire living conditions of the poor of the land, more specifically of what’s supposed to be the land of plenty: Latin America.
The first-person narrative plays out against the background of an old compass and then, only then, a breathtaking, sweeping view of a mountainous area: the mighty Andes range which clearly marks the route of poverty and exploitation of the uneducated have-nots at the hands of foreign corporations like the infamous United Fruit Company.
It’s the young Ernesto Guevara’s awakening to the dismal situation of farmers and industry workers subjected to long hours of toil for a pittance, and the enraging submission of Latin America’s military and ruling classes to the foreign powers that rule their fate.
La huella del doctor Ernesto Guevara closely follows on the footsteps of Guevara’s journey around Argentina’s hinterland and up north to Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Mexico, his final stopover before joining the revolutionary forces of Fidel Castro and their insurrection efforts against the rule of the US-backed government of Cuba’s Fulgencio Batista.
Focusing, at first, on Guevara the medical doctor striving to heal the destitute of Latin America, La hue-lla del doctor Ernesto Guevara is rich in testimony, which it puts to clever use with a static camera closing up on the interviewee’s facial gestures. Also, it presents viewers with enlightening statements about the historical, human and existential journey of a man born and raised to an upper middle-class family, a man who, as fate would have it, grew up to experience the hardships, illnesses, injustices and deprivations of a dark-skinned Latin America, still subjected to abhorrent living and working conditions years after the nominal abolition of slavery.
Contrary to the endearing characters of actor-director John Cassavettes, who have no social or political dimension to them and yet are as loveable as they come, the people in La huella del doctor Ernesto Guevara are true political animals. Whether uneducated and unaware of their rights or, on the contrary, fully politicized during their college years, they all share, to different degrees, the notion that there will be no better tomorrow without a fight.
Closely sticking to the dictum that there can be no good film without a good script, La huella del doctor Guevara is well articulated as far as emotional reactions is concerned. Denti’s script, however, does not follow a strict, rigorous linear pattern, and this is at times poetic and at times unclear and even disconcerting. It is evident that, right from the start, with documentary footage of unconsolable, devastated people mourning the death of Evita, director Denti makes a strange extrapolation, with self-explanatory scenes as the end credits begin to unroll and the picture comes full circle.
This blunder is a minor blemish on the illuminating nature of Denti’s documentary, which tells a well-known story framing it under a new light, pointing to self-evident truths in a far from pedantic or sententious manner.
Denti and his team must be credited with thorough research and intelligent retelling and reconstruction, in the case of incidents of which there is no recorded testimony. Case in point: the animated scenes depicting Guevara writing letters to his mother, letters which, after careful compilation, became a travelogue and a close view of the development of the Che’s leftwing ideology, which prompted him to embrace the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
Lovingly crafted and functioning as visual / aural intertitles segueing an endless chunk of documentary material, the animated scenes in La huella del doctor Ernesto Guevara are reminiscent of María Seoane’s Eva de la Argentina (2011), an original, highly successful experiment in telling political history through animation.
Articulating the narrative’s continuity, the animated scenes in La huella... mark the transition from subject matter and signpost the next issue.
Most importantly, they serve the purpose of underlining Che’s moods and feelings during each phase of his sojourn of the less-known side of Latin America. These continuity tools or discourse markers, so to speak, give La huella del doctor Ernesto Guevara the cohesion it lacks in other regards, namely some blurry patches — blurry as pitted against the potent documentary footage of armed revolt and popular insurrection, for example.
Faithfully reconstructing the Che’s periplum through years of painstaking investigative work, in times of political apathy, La huella del doctor Guevara draws an illuminating, inspiring picture of a man and a hero, of a man born to enjoy material privilege but chose, instead, to sacrifice his own life for the sake of a cause.
Set in the current historical context, and in spite of its minor flaws and blemishes, La huella del doctor Ernesto Guevara, running at a lengthy but rewarding 123 minutes, clearly makes a point of uncovering as many unknown aspects of Che’s years of ideological and armed struggle and his unflinching vocation to help his less fortunate fellow human beings.
And, on second thought, the way La huella del doctor Ernesto Guevara ends — in medias res, if we’re talking traditional narrative — fits the movie rather nicely, whetting viewers’ appetite and leaving them wanting for more.
