For a few weeks now, Steven Soderbergh's super-long (over four hours) biopic about Che Guevara has been playing in select cities. In some theaters here in San Francisco, the two parts of the film are screened back-to-back with an intermission between them.
That's a long time in the theater (or . . . anywhere) for one movie.
Would you sit through a movie this long in the theater?
Photo courtesy of IFC
"How does it feel to be a symbol?"
Che: "A symbol of what?"
Director Steven Soderbergh's lengthy biopic of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, collectively known as Che, will reportedly release in two parts: The Argentine will open in limited release on Dec. 12, with the second part, Guerrilla, following in January. The reception of the unfinished four-hour production that screened at Cannes was somewhat mixed (Variety's Todd McCarthy claims that Soderbergh has "withheld any suggestion of why the charismatic doctor, fighter, diplomat, diarist and intellectual theorist became and remains such a legendary figure; if anything, Che seems diminished by the way he’s portrayed here"). However, praise for Benicio Del Toro's frank, unflinching portrayal of Che is plentiful — even in the less-than-positive reviews.
Now there's a full-length US trailer, which uses dialogue sparsely, mostly allowing the powerful visuals to speak for themselves. It looks brutal, but it's also something I will simply have to see. To watch the trailer, read more
