Another Playlist-er experienced the film last week….
Harvey Keitel hosted a posh screening of “Che” in the bourgeois opulence of the Meatpacking District’s Soho House last week, offering a handful of people with friends in high indie movie places the opportunity to enjoy Part 1 of Steven Soderbergh’s latest.
Keitel introduced the film, which would have been enough for us. Not that we’re starstruck in general, but the man is the living embodiment of nearly everything we love about the movies. He gave a speech about the importance of supporting independent cinema, and he spoke extemporaneously and from the heart, with a cadence befitting one of the many great characters he’s played over the years. He could have been describing a good pumpkin pie recipe for Thanksgiving – we wouldn’t have cared. The man is a legend. Let him talk. But, please, the world could do without his wife’s pre-film comment drawing a facile parallel between Che Guevara and Barack Obama. Ladies and gentleman, now that the Democrats have won, you do not have license to say things like, “We’ve entered a new era. Now let’s see where it all began.” Especially when you’re talking to a room full of people in the Soho House, relaxed in a screening room Robert Evans might have helped design. A little bit crass in a radical chic sort of way, which is funny because there’s a scene that captures the vibe of Tom Wolfe’s essay fairly perfectly. But on to our rave of the film.
This movie is bananas, and we don’t just mean amazing. We mean, this movie made us want to back and watch Woody Allen’s 1971 comedy “Bananas,” which parodies the subject takes so seriously by “Che.” We were probably thinking about a parody of Latin American revolution because Soderbergh’s film feels so damn realistic and maybe even a little earnest. Never have two artists – Soderbergh and Benicio Del Toro – better known for a balls to the wall cinematic style so ingratiated themselves to the service of a project. Their cleverness is never gone completely, of course.
But it’s toned down and as a result they have created an extremely well balanced and intense war epic that embraces not just the story and its characters but also its message. In one scene, an interviewer asks Che what attribute characterizes the revolutionary. “Love,” he says (and I paraphrase). “Love for country, love for humanity.” A lot of real love was poured into this film – it is undeniable, unique, contagious, and quite humbling.
Our one complaint: Making us wait for Part 2. – Alex Sherman
The film has has a one-week limited engagement in New York and L.A. starting December 12 and then begins in limited release on January 12, 2009.