Che - review
As movie-making endeavours go, Steven Soderbergh's Che is up there with the boldest, and possibly most perverse, in recent memory.
This $58 million production was made entirely without American financing, and its eschewal of Hollywood formulae is quite startling. Soderbergh isn't interested in grand revelations about the Latin revolutionary hero Che Guevara, in potted psychology, in Che's controversial stature, or even in fitting his life into a two-part, four-hour-plus viewing marathon (in fact it covers only the last decade or so).
It's clear what Che is not, then, and one thing's for sure – it has absolutely no chance at the Oscars. But what is it?
The best I can do is "guerrilla biopic", but even that gives the impression of a portrait, and this film is a landscape, in its very bones. It's rangy and contemplative, a war picture about attrition, made with a painstaking fidelity to the factual record of Che's achievements, or those it chooses to tackle.
If it sounds like something of an ordeal, that's fair comment: Soderbergh is nothing if not fascinated by the arduous trudge and scramble of revolutionary warfare. If you feel you're being dragged through the mud with a bunch of smelly men in combat fatigues, that's entirely the idea – but whether you come away enlightened or perplexed will be a matter of taste.
This half of Soderbergh's project captures Che during the Cuban campaign, from his earliest discussions with Fidel Castro (vividly played by Demián Bichir) to the crucial assault on the Batista stronghold of Santa Clara in 1958. The history is taken as read – Soderbergh is almost high-handed in his refusal to put a gloss on it.
What we might hope for are revealing human moments in the fray, and physical demonstrations of the way this relentless campaign worked. What we get is almost purely the latter...
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
This $58 million production was made entirely without American financing, and its eschewal of Hollywood formulae is quite startling. Soderbergh isn't interested in grand revelations about the Latin revolutionary hero Che Guevara, in potted psychology, in Che's controversial stature, or even in fitting his life into a two-part, four-hour-plus viewing marathon (in fact it covers only the last decade or so).
It's clear what Che is not, then, and one thing's for sure – it has absolutely no chance at the Oscars. But what is it?
The best I can do is "guerrilla biopic", but even that gives the impression of a portrait, and this film is a landscape, in its very bones. It's rangy and contemplative, a war picture about attrition, made with a painstaking fidelity to the factual record of Che's achievements, or those it chooses to tackle.
If it sounds like something of an ordeal, that's fair comment: Soderbergh is nothing if not fascinated by the arduous trudge and scramble of revolutionary warfare. If you feel you're being dragged through the mud with a bunch of smelly men in combat fatigues, that's entirely the idea – but whether you come away enlightened or perplexed will be a matter of taste.
This half of Soderbergh's project captures Che during the Cuban campaign, from his earliest discussions with Fidel Castro (vividly played by Demián Bichir) to the crucial assault on the Batista stronghold of Santa Clara in 1958. The history is taken as read – Soderbergh is almost high-handed in his refusal to put a gloss on it.
What we might hope for are revealing human moments in the fray, and physical demonstrations of the way this relentless campaign worked. What we get is almost purely the latter...