Benicio Del Toro as Che Guevara in Steven Soderbergh’s “Che,” at the New York Film Festival. Director: Steven Soderbergh, Country: France/Spain, Release: 2008, Runtime: 268 with a 30 minute intermission.
The most eagerly awaited event at Cannes last May, Steven Soderbergh’s sweeping, Spanish-language meditation on the theory and practice of guerrilla warfare focuses on the two key episodes in Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s military career.
Benicio Del Toro (Best Actor at Cannes) brilliantly embodies the Argentine-born revolutionary, but Che is hardly a biopic. Rather, it’s a structuralist epic that in the tradition of Roberto Rossellini’s historical dramas objectively ponders the flow of history. The first two hours, mainly set in the late 1950s, concern the miraculous success of the Cuban Revolution. The second part dwells in harrowing detail on Guevara’s doomed attempt to repeat this victory a decade later in Bolivia.
At once boldly simplified and massively detailed, this didactic, dialectical and dazzlingly choreographed combat film challenges us to confront a figure as relevant to our times as he was to his own.
An IFC Films release.
Photo by Mary Ellen Mark-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."
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