The best documentaries are those that leave you not with a feeling of certainty you understand the topic that has taken your attention for the last hour or so.
The best documentaries leave you with a feeling of deep uncertainty; an uncomfortable suspicion most of the things you thought you understood about a subject were most probably wrong.
And more: they leave you with a realisation that life is disorganised, baffling and ultimately unknowable.
It is something like that - and doubtless there is a word in some foreign language that nails it in just a couple of syllables - one is left with after watching Chevolution.
Chevolution, on the Arts Channel next Saturday, traces the history, the multiple diverse reproductions and the ultimate commercialisation of the 1960 photo of Che Guevara taken by Alberto ''Korda'' Diaz.
Guevara, of course, was an Argentine revolutionary: a doctor, author, guerrilla leader and major figure in the Cuban revolution.
The photo in question has appeared on everything from a bottle of bubble bath to bikinis to beer, wallets, socks and cigarettes.
And many, many, T-shirts.
It was taken by Korda, a fashion photographer before the revolution, who drove an MG, dressed ever-so suavely, had a pencil-thin moustache and was usually seen in the company of beautiful women.
His work post-revolution was more - well, revolutionary.
On the fateful day, he was taking pictures at a public funeral in the Plaza de Revolución for those who died in the bombing of a boat carrying weapons from Belgium.
The image's story is complex and debated (it even involves John Paul Sartre) but the picture known to T-shirt wearers across the world was not picked up by the newspaper to which Korda handed it.
Instead it was cropped by the photographer, removing the context of the funeral, and quickly became the image de jour of every freedom-fighting organisation across the world.
And its popularity continues.
The 2008 documentary features a fascinating cast of characters: everyone from Korda's daughter to actor Antonio Banderas and Alberto Granado, Guevara's travelling companion in the South American odyssey that became the film The Motorcycle Diaries.
They are joined by a host of graphic designers, politicians, and Cuban Americans with a host of viewpoints on the man and the image.
Would Guevara have disliked the beret-topped visage used in the myriad of forms it now takes, as one suggests, or laughed at the situation as another surmises?
Was Guevara a doctor who chose bullets over a medical kit: an executioner who instigated a violent revolution that installed a totalitarian Marxist state; or a modern-day Jesus?
All these questions stay with the viewer once the final credits of Chevolution roll.
- Charles Loughrey
