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Release Date: Jan. 24
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Writer: Peter Buchman
Cinematographer: Peter Andrews
Starring: Benicio Del Toro
Studio/Run Time:
IFC Films, 257 mins.
Soderbergh and Del Toro treat Che’s life as a realist epic
It’s simply audacious to make a four-hour-plus film about the guerrilla struggles of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara without ever really speaking of Guevara’s life as a doctor, his eye-opening motorcycle trips across South America, his family, his relationship with Fidel Castro or his work in the Cuban government. And that’s exactly what director Steven Soderbergh has done. But consider Guevara himself, who was far more than audacious. He was, after all, Che. Played by a fully engaged Benicio Del Toro, Guevara is full-on iconic from Soderbergh’s first black-and-white pan across him.
Del Toro is gruff, never questing to tease out Guevara’s interior monologue. Rather, it’s Guevara’s unbendable will that centers the film and its two missions—one ascendant, one disastrous. It’s revolution both endless and ephemeral, made of hills and fields and arbitrary bits of terrain suddenly invested with great meaning. The rivers and battles and slaughtered horses are an irreducible language beyond metaphor, beyond socialism, beyond realism and beyond intensity. There, in an infinite loop of revolution, Soderbergh is victorious: Che lives.
Watch the trailer for Che:
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I'm definitely going to see this one when it arrives on these shores... Benicio Del Toro is a superb actor, the camera work looks splendid, and Soderbergh shows some guts daring to make an epic movie of that length. You can love or hate Che's political persona, but a fascinating character he surely was...
i hope steven didn't forget to mention Che murdered 10,000 people.
Che as Christ. Somehow, I don't remember Christ executing people with two to the head. Soderbergh and Del Toro were in an interview in Britain when one of Che's victims from La Cabana prison called in. He asked why their movie made such a murderer so heroic. They had no answer. This is leftist claptrap.
I agree that Che was an interesting historical figure. That's about all he was. What most of the ignorant anti-establishment crowd doesn't realize is how grim the atrocities he commited actually were. Try reading "Exposing the Real Che Guevara: And the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him," by Humberto Fontova, a Cuban-American who had the bad luck of experiencing one of Che's "revolutions." Can't wait for the day when I can stop seeing those idiotic shirts with the silhouette of his nappy mug on them.
Fleiter, I'm no fan of the movie, myself, but I also think it's pretty clear that it shows Che as a failure in the two-plus hours that close the film. How does the film make him heroic? My criticism of the movie is that its elegant symmetry -- the achievements in Cuba matched point for point with failures in Argentina -- feel cleaner than history, to me. Not that I know much about it. I just know enough to be skeptical of such a well-organized view of the world.
But if you're thinking the film is like Walk the Line or Ray, well you may want to brew a pot of coffee before you watch Che. Sorry if I'm wrongly assuming you haven't seen the film.
Err, I meant Bolivia instead of Argentina.
Soderbergh left out Che's murders, torture, mysogynism, intolerance, and hate. Guess he needed more time...