It’s like practically Che day here at The Playlist (my Che-adoring grandparents, who literally still have their bedroom adorned with his vistage, would be proud). Two clips from the epic have made it online and they’re below (but beforewarned, they’re just the same AFP clip cut into 2 sections, but in a less shitty embed player). Reuters even-handedly says, “Early reaction to ‘Che’ has been mixed, with reviews questioning its length and Soderbergh’s apparent determination to avoid heightening the drama through Hollywood conventions.”
“As I went into the research of the character I became more and more like a deer in the headlights, more afraid of approaching him because I kept learning,” Del Toro said.
The shoot was a difficult one, Soderbergh told reporters (Anne Thompson quickly transcribed this quote). “On the set I told the actors that I’m not going to be able to take care of you. I’m just trying to get this movie shot on schedule. And they formed a support group to survive it.”
Reuters also notes the film could be a “tough sell.” Considering it’s four hours in length, about a Cuban revolutionary and told entirely in Spanish, gee, you think??
You can’t make a film with any level of credibility in this case unless it’s in Spanish,” Soderbergh said. “I hope we’re reaching a time where you go make a movie in another culture, that you shoot in the language of that culture. I’m hoping the days of that sort of specific brand of cultural imperialism have ended.”
“Cuba is less of an issue for me than Che,” Soderbergh told Cannes reporters. “I think he’s great movie material is really what it comes down to. He had one of the most fascinating lives I can imagine in the last century.” The Hollywood Reporter weighs in with a review. They say that while the film is “a highly worthwhile, professionally-accomplished project, but in its obsessive devotion to precise documentation, the it forgets to inspire.”