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Steven Soderbergh's Che opened at Cannes on Wednesday. I can't believe very many people would sit through a 41/2 hour movie about this iconic revolutionary. I think a director has some responsibility to depict the brutal side of this man. But it will apparently gloss over the unsavory bits rather like Motorcycle Diaries did. If this movie is picked up by an American distributor I will bet it will never be shown in Miami.
From yesterday's New York Times:
May 23, 2008
CANNES JOURNAL
Soderbergh and Che, Provocateurs
By A. O. SCOTT
CANNES, France — On Wednesday morning festivalgoers — or at least the hordes of journalists who stumble into the Salle Lumière every day at 8:30 after a few hours’ sleep and a hasty café au lait — were given a bit of a break. In a departure, there was no competition press screening on the schedule, which provided some of us with an opportunity to glance at the trades, have a second café au lait and rest our eyes in anticipation of a long night of revolutionary struggle.
Starting at 6:30 in the evening there would be two almost simultaneous screenings of “Che,” Steven Soderbergh’s nearly four-and-a-half-hour exploration of the life of Ernesto Guevara, the asthmatic Argentine doctor who became a leader of Castro’s revolution and, posthumously, a boon to the T-shirt vendors of the world.
The expectations surrounding “Che” could hardly have been higher. Mr. Soderbergh, surprise winner of the Palme d’Or in 1989 for “Sex, Lies and Videotape,” has emerged since then as one of the most protean and interesting of American filmmakers, exploring an astonishing range of genres and styles with consistent skill, intelligence and audacity. Not every movie has been great, but they have all been different. And not many directors would follow commercial froth like “Oceans Thirteen” with a digitally shot, Spanish-language epic about a Marxist militant.
In the weeks before this year’s competition slate was announced, “Che” was the center of much speculation. It was in; it was out; it wasn’t finished; it was two pictures; it was one. The version shown in the Lumière was a single movie, without opening titles or closing credits (so maybe not quite finished). There was an intermission, during which sandwiches were passed out to the hungry audience.
The halves of “Che” are mirror images. The first, though it flashes back to Guevara’s early acquaintance with Mr. Castro in Mexico and forward to his visit to New York for an appearance at the United Nations in 1964, is essentially the chronicle of a successful insurgency. It follows Mr. Castro, Guevara and their comrades from 1956 to 1959, through the stages of their war to overthrow the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, and it dwells less on their motives and personalities than on matters of military procedure. With impressive coherence and attention to tactical detail, Mr. Soderbergh shows how Mr. Castro’s initially tiny army fought its way down from the mountains of the Sierra Maestra and ultimately routed Batista’s forces.
The second half, devoted to the guerrilla campaign in Bolivia in 1967 that ended in Guevara’s death, is equally rigorous in its depiction of a failed revolt. Though Guevara tried, in a new context, to apply the strategic lessons of the Cuban revolution — concentrate on the countryside; cultivate popular support; maintain discipline and cohesion in the ranks — everything went wrong. And it turned out that Guevara’s adversaries, the Bolivian army and its American advisers, had learned a thing or two about how to wage an effective counterinsurgency.
There is a lot, however, that the audience will not learn from this big movie, which has some big problems as well as major virtues. In between the two periods covered in “Che,” Guevara was an important player in the Castro government, but his brutal role in turning a revolutionary movement into a dictatorship goes virtually unmentioned. This, along with Benicio Del Toro’s soulful and charismatic performance, allows Mr. Soderbergh to preserve the romantic notion of Guevara as a martyr and an iconic figure, an idealistic champion of the poor and oppressed. By now, though, this image seems at best naïve and incomplete, at worst sentimental and dishonest. More to the point, perhaps, it is not very interesting.
But “Che” itself is interesting, partly because it has the power to provoke some serious argument — about its own tactics and methods, as well as those of its subject. Whether American audiences will have a chance to participate in that argument is, for the moment, an open question. The mood here among buyers has been extremely cautious, and as of this writing, distributors have balked at spending $8 million to $10 million (the reported asking price for “Che”) on a 258-minute movie to be released in two parts, with subtitles.
From yesterday's New York Times:
May 23, 2008
CANNES JOURNAL
Soderbergh and Che, Provocateurs
By A. O. SCOTT
CANNES, France — On Wednesday morning festivalgoers — or at least the hordes of journalists who stumble into the Salle Lumière every day at 8:30 after a few hours’ sleep and a hasty café au lait — were given a bit of a break. In a departure, there was no competition press screening on the schedule, which provided some of us with an opportunity to glance at the trades, have a second café au lait and rest our eyes in anticipation of a long night of revolutionary struggle.
Starting at 6:30 in the evening there would be two almost simultaneous screenings of “Che,” Steven Soderbergh’s nearly four-and-a-half-hour exploration of the life of Ernesto Guevara, the asthmatic Argentine doctor who became a leader of Castro’s revolution and, posthumously, a boon to the T-shirt vendors of the world.
The expectations surrounding “Che” could hardly have been higher. Mr. Soderbergh, surprise winner of the Palme d’Or in 1989 for “Sex, Lies and Videotape,” has emerged since then as one of the most protean and interesting of American filmmakers, exploring an astonishing range of genres and styles with consistent skill, intelligence and audacity. Not every movie has been great, but they have all been different. And not many directors would follow commercial froth like “Oceans Thirteen” with a digitally shot, Spanish-language epic about a Marxist militant.
In the weeks before this year’s competition slate was announced, “Che” was the center of much speculation. It was in; it was out; it wasn’t finished; it was two pictures; it was one. The version shown in the Lumière was a single movie, without opening titles or closing credits (so maybe not quite finished). There was an intermission, during which sandwiches were passed out to the hungry audience.
The halves of “Che” are mirror images. The first, though it flashes back to Guevara’s early acquaintance with Mr. Castro in Mexico and forward to his visit to New York for an appearance at the United Nations in 1964, is essentially the chronicle of a successful insurgency. It follows Mr. Castro, Guevara and their comrades from 1956 to 1959, through the stages of their war to overthrow the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, and it dwells less on their motives and personalities than on matters of military procedure. With impressive coherence and attention to tactical detail, Mr. Soderbergh shows how Mr. Castro’s initially tiny army fought its way down from the mountains of the Sierra Maestra and ultimately routed Batista’s forces.
The second half, devoted to the guerrilla campaign in Bolivia in 1967 that ended in Guevara’s death, is equally rigorous in its depiction of a failed revolt. Though Guevara tried, in a new context, to apply the strategic lessons of the Cuban revolution — concentrate on the countryside; cultivate popular support; maintain discipline and cohesion in the ranks — everything went wrong. And it turned out that Guevara’s adversaries, the Bolivian army and its American advisers, had learned a thing or two about how to wage an effective counterinsurgency.
There is a lot, however, that the audience will not learn from this big movie, which has some big problems as well as major virtues. In between the two periods covered in “Che,” Guevara was an important player in the Castro government, but his brutal role in turning a revolutionary movement into a dictatorship goes virtually unmentioned. This, along with Benicio Del Toro’s soulful and charismatic performance, allows Mr. Soderbergh to preserve the romantic notion of Guevara as a martyr and an iconic figure, an idealistic champion of the poor and oppressed. By now, though, this image seems at best naïve and incomplete, at worst sentimental and dishonest. More to the point, perhaps, it is not very interesting.
But “Che” itself is interesting, partly because it has the power to provoke some serious argument — about its own tactics and methods, as well as those of its subject. Whether American audiences will have a chance to participate in that argument is, for the moment, an open question. The mood here among buyers has been extremely cautious, and as of this writing, distributors have balked at spending $8 million to $10 million (the reported asking price for “Che”) on a 258-minute movie to be released in two parts, with subtitles.
please. you mean open demonstrations and possibly marches on the eve of its opening. any publicity is good publicity, or so they say.
