Just watched Part 1 of Soderbergh's "Che." I think it's fantastic, especially coming from mainstream Hollywood. Am I mistaken, comrades?
....
I enjoyed the movie.
And while it was refreshing to see revolutionary action treated matter-of-factly (free of both liberal and reactionary styles of demonization) what I really enjoyed is the depiction of sublime competence and beautiful detachment.
I enjoyed "Che" for the same reason I enjoyed Mann's "Public Enemies" (as Bhaskar mentioned), Lang's "The Testament of Dr. Mabuse" and pretty much Kubrick's entire body of work -- lack of sentiment, efficient storytelling and the opportunity to fall, after a fashion, into a dream of technique.
To me, this is the loveliest form of escapism, much more satisfying and realized than what's typically seen in the types of movies usually given that label (romance, scifi, fantasy, costume dramas, etc).
In daily life, there are countless, unavoidable distractions and prods to ever shifting states of excitement, disappointment and elation. In "Che", as in the (few) other movies of its type, all this is swept away. What remains is an intense focus on process and structure. The viewer who absorbs this POV, if only for a few hours, fleetingly resembles Paternak's Strelnikov.
Roger Ebert's review gets at my meaning:
<snip>
"Che" is all in the present tense. He has made an irrevocable decision to overthrow governments, he explains why in his descriptions of injustice, he identifies with peasants and not with his own ruling class, and although he is nominally a Communist, we do not hear discussion of theory and ideology. He seems completely focused on the task immediately before him. His method is to give voice to popular resentment against a dictator, win the support of the people and demoralize opposing armies of unenthusiastic soldiers. He needs few men because he has a powerful idea behind him.
That method worked in Cuba and failed in Bolivia. Soderbergh's 258-minute film works as an arc: Upward to victory, a pause with his family in Argentina, downward to defeat. The scenes in Argentina show him with his second wife, Aleida (Catalina Sandino Moreno), and children, but do not engage in why he left them, how his wife really feels, how he feels about them. A wanted person, he has disguised himself so successfully that his children do not recognize him as he presides over the dinner table. His wife shared his political ideas but must have had deep feelings about a man who would leave his children to lead a revolutionary war in another country; but we don't hear them, and in a way it's a relief to be spared the conventional scenes of recrimination. It is all as it is.
That helps explain another peculiarity of the film. Surprising attention is given to Che meeting the volunteers who join his guerrilla bands. Names, embraces. But little effort is made to single them out as individuals, to develop complex relationships. Che enforces an inviolable rule: He will leave no wounded man behind. But there is no sense that he is personally emotionally involved with his men. It is a man he will not leave behind, not this man. It is the idea.
[...]
full --
<http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090114/REVIEWS/901149990/1023>
shortened url --
.d.