Steven Soderbergh’s sprawling two-part/ four hour epic, “Che,” about Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara starring 2008 Cannes Best Actor winner Benicio del Toro screened this past weekend to L.A. critics and audiences at the AFI Film Festival.
For many L.A. critics, this was their first crack at the incredibly ambitious work and the contentious political figure and continuing with its reception thus far, reviews were mixed and polarizing.
The L.A. Times got in deep with Soderbergh over the weekend and they noted that some critics think the film is a grand masterwork (we’re pretty much in that camp) and some think its a huge folly.
Asked about the films divisive response, Soderbergh said, “I hoped that there would be discussion. If you’ve made something that doesn’t get people going in one direction or another, then you’ve probably made a mistake.”
Many people seem to think that “Che” is a lionizing, hagiography, but they’d be missing the point by miles. Soderbergh’s almost-voyeuristic lens is apolitical (which is why some have called it “undramatic”) — we watch as the best and the worst of Guevara’s behavior comes to the surface whether its compassionate side as a doctor and aid to the poor or the execution of men who have betrayed his orders – one thing’s for certain, Che is unwaivering and uncompromising both on duty and off. The man is principled to a fault, but there’s no traditional biopic beats — there’s no explanation as to why he earns his “Che” nickname (it’s an Argentinean word for “eh”), and other predictable Cliff notes beats etc. — and this makes it difficult for some to swallow.
“I was making a mental list of all the things I didn’t want to do,” Soderbergh said. “I didn’t want to have the scene where the guy goes, ‘Why do they call you Che?’ Or his hat flies off in a battle and somebody offers him a beret. I just didn’t want to do that stuff. It’s not a typical biographical film. That’s not what I was interested in making. I knew the approach was going to be one that some people would really take to and some people would be angered by. And that’s fine.”
The film is screening in its “roadshow” version in NY and L.A. for one week in December — one film with a four-hours-plus running time and an intermission break. And then in January, the picture will screen as two separate films, “Che Part 1: The Argentine” and “Che Part 2: Guerrilla,” and be made available for video-on-demand service.
Perhaps its because we grew up outside the American high school system, but the level of ignorance surrounding Che, his political leanings and even some basic understanding of the man is just astounding.
Essentially every piece we’ve read about Che leads you to believe no one ever heard about the man until Rage Against The Machine plastered him all over their T-shirts with the iconic 1960 photo by Alberto Korda (which is also thankfully not referenced outright either).
“I think a lot of people know the T-shirt but don’t really know that many facts about Che,” the screenwriter Peter Buchman echoing this idea said.
At first Buchman and Soderbergh tried to make the movie into one film, but it was just too crammed and packed to function as one movie experience.
“For most people, that’s question No. 1. It felt very much like a John Huston movie, that story had a very quixotic aspect to it. The problem was this thing just kept expanding, like ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,’ it kept getting bigger and bigger. We tried to make it one giant script and it was unreadable. And I thought, ‘Let’s just break the thing in half.’ “
Some critics just didn’t get though, seemingly overwhelmed by the length, inexplicably not understanding his politics and actually asking for some of the more conventional narrative biopic tropes that have no become complete cliches. In fact, Soderbergh has basically been critically reprimanded for not being conventional enough and it’s quite sad to see.
We wouldn’t say there’s a conspiracy at work cause there’s not, but we’re really feeling an American, anti-Castro vibe going on here that subliminally slipped into a lot of incredibly dismissive reports on this film; it’s very disconcerting. Then again it could be the length. Four hour movies are taxing, hell, we find two 1/2 hour films taxing at times, but “Che” both “The Argentine” and “Guerrilla” had us captivated for every second on screen. We’re not kidding, every second. We saw the methodical procedural at the Toronto Film Festival and we were pretty much more engaged in the film than any other save for “Slumdog Millionaire” (essentially our two favorite films from the festival).
Soderbergh talks about the criticism of not portraying Che’s worst moments, including post-Cuban revolutionary administrative power which included overseeing war tribunals (fair enough, but people who think Soderbergh cast “Che” in a poetic freedom fighter mode have apparently seen a different film than we did, there are no shots or filmmaking choices that aggrandize the man, it’s such a completely even-keeled and cool depiction).
“The most virulent anti-Che people usually focus on the events in the immediate aftermath of the revolution and that was something I addressed through his U.N. speech, but I was never interested in doing that part of his life as a bureaucrat. I’m sure some people will say, ‘That’s convenient because that’s when he was at his worst.’ Yeah, maybe — it just wasn’t interesting to me. I was interested in making a procedural about guerrilla warfare.”
Whether its politics or length, the producers of the film are aware the movie is a hard sell in the U.S., but they insist it was the length that shied away financial backers.
“A lot of people think the reason the movie didn’t have any U.S. financing was because it was about Che Guevara,” producer Laura Bickford said, “and that’s not the case. Nobody cared about the politics. When the movie was in English and one movie, everybody wanted to do it. When we went to Spanish and two movies, the studios’ pay-TV deals are for English-language product only. So the pay-TV money disappeared and, at that point, nobody wanted to step up.”
While indie film companies are drying up and staying away from films that are a sure bet, President of IFC Entertainment, Jonathan Sehring, says he’s “over the moon” to be releasing the pictures likening it to epics as “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Spartacus.”
We’ve nabbed a ton of pictures from the film, the top ones, mostly in a orangey-hue come from “The Argentine” and the cooler-blue ones with Che’s longer hair come from the fated Bolivian campaign in “Guerrilla.” We’ve noted it once already, but it must be said again, yes, del Toro is immersive and amazing in the film, but Demián Bichir as Fidel Castro is also marvelously realistic and committed. Oscar seems to be out of the question for this film, aside from maybe del Toro (again, politically this film is antithetical to the Academy), but it would be nice to see him get some sort of recognition for his outstanding work.