The question of whether, and if so to what extent, a filmmaker has a "responsibility" (for lack of a better word) to history when dealing with historical topics is a thorny one whose implications obviously aren't solely artistic. On the one hand, a filmmaker in the end is creating a piece of art whose merits and faults are independent of how closely it hews to history. (For example, the famous and powerful "Odessa steps" scene in Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin has virtually no basis in fact.) On the other hand, when a filmmaker creates a film ostensibly based on history, he represents his film as a relatively accurate portrayal of that history, whether he wishes to represent it as such or not. The fact that Soderbergh and countless other filmmakers have felt the need to tell people that their history-based movies are works of fiction is evidence of this. It's only natural for the first reaction of audiences who see a film called Che with characters named Che Guevara, Fidel and Raúl Castro, etc. to be, "Oh, I guess this is pretty much what actually happened and what those people were actually like." If Soderbergh wanted to avoid this and be completely free to pursue his own artistic vision, he could easily have changed names and events and presented the film as unrelated to historical facts. Since he didn't do that, he and his film are stuck in the creatively ambiguous limbo between fiction and nonfiction, art and history.
Now, given that an artist has to make certain decisions in how to depict his subject—what to emphasize, what to downplay, what to leave out altogether—there's really no way for a film like Che not to have some propaganda aspects. Soderbergh couldn't possibly have shown every facet of Che's life and personality, so his life and personality necessarily become simplified when they become the basis for a piece of art—maybe not as simplified as a face on a T-shirt, but moving in that direction nevertheless. However, I think Soderbergh goes beyond mere artistic license or inevitable simplification, and into the direction of propaganda, in the one-sidedness of his Che. Though he said, "I'm just an artist," his artistic vision evidently didn't include an interest in showing any shades of gray in his main character. This goes so far as his decision in filming to avoid close-ups, to complement his subject's "hard-core sort of egalitarian socialist principles." This truly is reminiscent of Riefenstahl's filmmaking for the Nazis, for instance her depiction in Olympia of a field of athletes in perfect rows doing push-ups in unison, their individuality replaced with machine-like regimentation and uniformity in keeping with the Nazis' collectivist ideology. I agree that Soderbergh doesn't go nearly as far as Riefenstahl—in the opening of Triumph of the Will she referred to the Nazis' rise to power as "the start of Germany's rebirth" (about 0:01:10 in)—but his interest in using the film to paper over its subject's complexity, rather than to explore it, is disappointing and troubling.
I think these kinds of issues are fascinating and important. As you know, I'm a bit of a history nerd, so inaccuracies in the way history is depicted tend to set my teeth on edge. But I also realize that there are often compelling artistic reasons to deviate from pure fact—expressing one's creative vision, trying to convey a "deeper truth," or simple storytelling economy. How much a piece of art depicting actual events belongs to the artist, and how much it belongs to those events and should adhere to them, is often a tough call. And then there's also the distinct but related question of films adapted from a fictional book or play and how much they should adhere to their source material. I'm planning on looking at some of these issues a bit more in the near future with other films I have in mind.
And to answer your question, I think we should hold off on renaming the blog "Owen and Matt Talk Che" for now—at least until we get an advertising deal from one of those Che T-shirt outfits.
P.S. — And thanks for paying forward Soderbergh's use of "philistine"; now all I can think of is Billy Baldwin's "philistine" character in The Squid and the Whale. Come to think of it—and maybe it's just a product of talking about Arrested Development recently and watching Lost tonight—what do you think are the odds that Billy Baldwin in The Squid and the Whale ("Hey, mah brothah, who taught you these junkyard strokes?"), Buster Bluth ("Hey, brother!"), and Desmond Hume ("Aye, bruthah.") were separated at birth? Eerie, I know.
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