What does it say about people presumed to know a great deal about the art of movies but who put down or dismiss a film that eschews conventional drama (intimate revelations, emotional moments, striking plot turns) but delivers like a wizard in terms of convincing the viewer that what’s on-screen isn’t a product of the usual prepared trickery but something intensely scrupulous and honest and, as far as it goes, as “real” as it gets’? What does it say about people who see a film like this and go “meh” ? You can’t watch a live-wire film like Che and say “give me more.” It is what it is, and it gives you plenty. Take no notice of anyone who says it doesn’t.

“Unfortunately, at least in the balcony which is out of the sight line where the filmmakers sit, the crowd noticeably thinned after intermission. A little less than half the seats in my 50 seat or so section were suddenly empty along with dozens of others scattered throughout the upper regions. Perhaps those moviegoers had dinner reservations somewhere? Or maybe they just knew how it was going to end. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: You can’t please everyone in Cannes.” — from Pete Hammond‘s Envelope report about last night’s Che screening.

Che director Steven Soderbergh, costar Catalina Sandino Moreno, star Benicio del Toro prior to last night’s Grand Lumiere showing.

Manhattan media maven Bill McCuddy attended a midnight showing of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull at the Zeigfeld last night, and reports that the trailer for Baz Lurhman‘s Australia got booed. What does that mean? That Spielberg fanboys have had it up to here with Nicole Kidman…? It can’t be about Luhrman or Hugh Jackman. I’m grasping at straws, but I know that boos from paying audiences are a bellwether that distributors can’t afford to ignore.

Some Came Running‘s Glenn Kenny, writing for Indiewire, liked Che also. He doesn’t exactly convey the doing of cartwheels in the lobby in this piece, but here, at least, is a striking passage: “Good thing that Soderbergh, as far as my opinion is concerned, doesn’t have a rabble-rousing bone in his body. Che benefits greatly from certain Soderberghian qualities that don’t always serve his other films well, e.g., detachment, formalism, and intellectual curiosity.”

“No doubt it will be back to the drawings board for Che, Steven Soderbergh‘s intricately ambitious, defiantly nondramatic four-hour, 18-minute presentation of scenes from the life of revolutionary icon Che Guevara,” writes Variety‘s Todd McCarthy.
“If the director has gone out of his way to avoid the usual Hollywood biopic conventions, he has also 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.” HE response: I couldn’t disagree more. In The Argentine Guevara seems about as brave, thoughtful, resourceful and heroic as anyone could possibly imagine or portray him.
“Originally announced as two separate films, The Argentine and Guerrilla,” to be released separately, the film was shown as one picture, with intermission, under the title Che (although neither this nor any other credits appeared onscreen) in its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.
“Neither half feels remotely like a satisfying stand-alone film, while the whole offers far too many aggravations for its paltry rewards. Scattered partisans are likely to step forward, but the pic in its current form is a commercial impossibility, except on television or DVD.”

Whoever handled the transportation for the Wild Bunch’s Che party last night — i.e., arranging for rides from the front of the Miramar to Villa Murano, which is apparently way up in the damn hills — is inconsiderate and incompetent. The invitees were told to assemble on the corner in front of the Miramar. I arrived a little bit late (two women had been there for 20 minutes at that point), but for 40 minutes roughly 35 or 40 people waited around for a shuttle that never came.

Just after the 40- or 45-minute minute mark one lousy black SUV with the words “Villa Murano” pulled up and five or six people got in. That’s it? If the Wild Bunch person behind the transportation arrangements had for some reason intended to exasperate, insult and anger the invitees, this is exactly what he/she would have done. Congratulations, Wild Bunch!
I don’t know when I’ll find the time to sit down and write something longer and more exacting about Steven Soderbergh‘s Che movies — maybe this afternoon.

“I can’t predict how all of the questions and possibilities about Steven Soderbergh‘s Che will play out, but I can say — and will say — what a rare pleasure it is to have a film (or films) that, in our box-office obsessed, event-movie, Oscar-craving age, is actually worth talking about on so many levels,” writes Cinematical‘s James Rocchi.

“Bad biographical dramas try to tell you everything about a person’s life; good biographical dramas leave you inspired to find out the things not on-screen. Che is, by that yardstick, a very good biographical drama.
“To many, Che Guevara is an icon; to most, he’s an image on a t-shirt. To some, he’s a murderer; to others, an inspiration. Che (which I’ll use throughout this review to refer to both films for reasons of clarity) does not show us the man behind the T-shirt; instead, it takes the more interesting direction of showing us how the man wound up on the T-shirt.
“Che doesn’t wallow in Guevara’s personal life — this is how he felt, this is how he loved, this is what he believed, this made him what he is — but simply shows us some (not all) of the events in Guevara’s life and how they changed him and changed history.”

The second half of Che, also known as Guerilla, just got out about a half-hour ago, and equally delighted although it’s a different kind of film — tighter, darker (naturally, given the story). But I’ve been arguing with some colleagues who don’t like either film at all, or don’t think it’s commercial. Glenn Kenny and Kim Voynar feel as I do, but Anne Thompson is on the other side of the Grand Canyon. Peter Howell is in the enemy camp also.

I know I predicted this based on a reading of Peter Buchman‘s script, but the first half of Steven Soderbergh‘s 268-minute Che Guevara epic is, for me, incandescent — a piece of full-on, you-are-there realism about the making of the Cuban revolution that I found utterly believable. Not just “take it to the bank” gripping, but levitational — for someone like myself it’s a kind of perfect dream movie. It’s also politically vibrant and searing — tells the “Che truth,” doesn’t mince words, doesn’t give you any “movie moments” (and God bless it for that).
It’s what I’d hoped for all along and more. The tale is the tale, and it’s told straight and true. Benicio del Toro‘s Guevara portrayal is, as expected, a flat-immersion that can’t be called a “performance” as much as…I don’t know, some kind of knock-down, ass-kick reviving of the dead. Being, not “acting.” I loved the lack of sentimentality in this thing, the electric sense that Soderbergh is providing a real semblance of what these two experiences — the successful Cuban revolution of ’57 and ’58, and the failed attempt to do the same in Boliva in ’67 — were actually like.
Oh, God…the second half is starting right now. The aspect ratio on the second film is 1.85 to 1, but the first film was in Scope 2.35 to 1.

The most keenly anticipated film of the festival begins in two hours and 25 minutes. Four hours and 28 minutes plus a break between the two films, so figure five hours. I’m going to text a mini-review of Part One (i.e, The Argentine) during this break, and probably some kind of quickie judgment after the whole thing ends sometime around 11:30 pm. But a full-on review won’t happen until tomorrow morning.