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Che (Steven Soderbergh, France/Spain): 48

As movies with no compelling reason to exist go, this one is really quite good. Soderbergh's shift from freewheeling, widescreen Cuban triumph to flat, plodding Bolivian nightmare packs the intended dialectical punch, and you couldn't ask for a less flashy, more committed portrait of Guevara -- so intent is Del Toro on eschewing mythology that Che often threatens to recede into the background of his own movie. The film is scrupulously intelligent, admirably evenhanded, and only very faintly dull given its extreme length. It's just...why? Granted, I tend to ask that question of most fact-based films, and almost every biopic, but usually there's some glimmer of vitality to be found, if only in the star's evident desperation to win approval and/or an Oscar. Here, it feels more as if Soderbergh drew the subject "Che Guevara" out of a hat and then set about finding the most interesting approach he could think of; never for a moment do you get the sense that he's invested in the project as anything more than a technical exercise. The film's champions, e.g. Glenn Kenny, claim that Che is about "process," but while we certainly get acquainted with the nuts and bolts of armed insurrection, such exhaustive cataloguing in no way dovetails with the grandiose rise|fall structure. (The process is essentially the same in both campaigns; it's just that the Bolivians refuse to cooperate.) At the post-screening Q&A, Soderbergh confessed that he hadn't known at the outset what drew him to Guevara, but that he ultimately came to realize that for him the film is fundamentally about engagement -- an almost comical irony, since he couldn't possibly seem more disengaged.

Posted on 10/07/08 by: dangelo 01:29 PM