SÍ, SE PUEDE: Benicio Del Toro as Ernesto “Che” Guevara,

Of the many things I was expecting from Steven Soderberg’s paean to Che Guevara, a sense of irony was not high on the list. But here is Che, its heroes poised literally on the brink of triumphant uprising, the band of guerrillas peering from a hillside toward the final stronghold of Batista’s Cuba. “That’s Las Villas,” their guide announces proudly, “behind the clouds.” And the camera stares over the revolutionaries’ shoulders as they gaze into… a blank wall of mist. They will take Las Villas, and all of Cuba, but the final, validating victory will always remain just out of sight.

Soderberg’s audience could be forgiven if they too wonder when the end will ever arrive. Divided into two halves, Che cumulatively runs 269 minutes; when shown together (as it will be this weekend in Portland), with an intermission and a post-screening visit from the director, this amounts to a commitment of well over five hours. “Our contact with the outside will be limited,” Guevara warns his Bolivian troops before they wander into the brush. “Some of us will die, and it’s sad to see your comrades die because you can’t help them with your limited resources.… By the end, we will have become human waste.” Also, we will be very tired of popcorn. Can any movie, however nobly conceived, justify this degree of sacrifice?

Che very nearly does. The movie has grave flaws, but they are failings of forthrightness, not of ambition or effort. It is global in scope, intimate in detail, and engrossing as only bold cinema can be. The movie can also be a slog—there is no lack of mountains crossed, or rivers forded—and it is possible to get lost. But the twin films, originally titled The Argentine and The Guerrilla, are precisely arranged as mirrors: The first half is a swift rise to Cuban coup in 1958; the second part an unsettling spiral into death in a Bolivian government hut in 1967. The two titles could in fact be switched, since the first film reveals Guevara’s mastery of village-by-village fighting tactics, and the second suggests the fiasco of a foreigner attempting to incite social upheaval as an outsider.

Not that Benicio Del Toro ever acknowledges any inadequacy. As Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the actor goes through countless haircuts—including the iconic goatee, a balding-pate disguise, and a jungle of facial growth that makes him look like the Unfrozen Caveman Communist—but he never loses a scorching intensity in his eyes, a look that suggests he can see only the whirring mechanism of revolution. The name “Che” is slang for “man,” and Del Toro portrays the romantic strategist as someone attempting to create a model of idealized humanity for those who follow him.

Soderberg, however, is mostly uninterested in advancing a cult of personality—this is not a Che that will be hung in sophomore dorm halls. (It seems more keen to reach the classroom; it is the first epic in memory to begin each chapter with a montage of topographic maps.) The director isn’t willing to besmirch the beloved comrade, either, or exhibit any of the good doctor’s more unsavory deeds. You’d have to comb Che with a fine-toothed pause button to find any mention of military tribunals, and the only execution is the wholly justified removal of a rapist from the ranks. But for all its evasions, the picture is most concerned with what happens when ideology is sifted through charisma—and when both reach their inevitable limits.

Che, which intentionally echoes Lawrence of Arabia, climaxes with the astonishing single-take derailing of a convoy train, and its most affecting sequence shows the young comrades returning to the wreck for snapshots. That scene takes place at sunrise; the movie’s second part seems to exist in a dirty dusk. Vision is literally reduced: The aspect ratio in the latter movie is cropped tighter, and all focus is steadily foreshortened, until it is condensed to Guevara alone in a blurry haze. At the end, in that final Bolivian hut, he is asked how Cuba is doing: “Cuba,” he replies evenly, “is progressing.” So is he, in a way. The commander who once rolled his speeches around Havana stogies is offered a few merciful puffs of rolling tobacco. Close, but no cigar.

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SEE IT:Che is rated R. It opens Friday at Cinema 21. The NW Film Center and Cinema 21 will host Steven Soderberg for screenings at 7 pm Friday, March 13, and 1:30 and 7 pm Saturday, March 14.