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Our Man in Cannes: Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Che’ premieres
CANNES, France — Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” premiered Wednesday night in a five-hour marathon session, including an intermission, and it’s safe to say that it’s the most ambitious movie from an American director since the 1970s.
Benicio Del Toro stars as the Argentine revolutionary who helped overthrow the Batista regime in Cuba and helped install Fidel Castro as the longtime leader.
That’s the segment that originally made up the first part, called “The Argentine” and now called “Che Part 1.”
The second part deals with Che’s role as a guerrilla leader in Bolivia, 10 years after the Cuban revolution. That movie was originally to be called “The Guerrilla” but screened Wednesday night as “Che Part 2.”
It’s unclear how the epic tale will eventually be released in the States. After all, the long running time would prevent exhibitors from showing it more than once per evening, cutting into ticket sales and, thus, profitability.
Soderbergh is expected to address such questions at a news conference Thursday.
Whatever the case, the Wednesday night screening was a spectacle that is assured of getting both raves and pans from the international press. After the movie ended, there was a bit of competition from those who were booing and those who were cheering. The cheers predominated.
To film the movie, Soderbergh used a new digital process called RED. The body of the camera is designed for flexibility and weighs about 9 pounds.
Soderbergh says the RED process “sees the way I see … so beautifully attuned to that most natural of phenomena — light.”
During the intermission Wednesday night, the entryway to the theater was abuzz. The festival handed out brown bags filled with sandwiches, Kit Kats and bottled water to about a thousand journalists who stuck around for the second half. And that was the vast majority.
I’ve never seen anything quite like it in Cannes.
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By Larry
May 21, 2008 10:45 PM | Link to this
Che also murdered hundreds of unarmed, imprisoned men who opposed Castro or communism in Cuba. Thankfully, later when Che went to Bolivia he was killed. He was attempting to get the local communists there to stop talking and start killing their neighbors. How accurate is this movie?