Given their American Revolution born-again fervour, given their boisterous Good-Time-Charlie approach to celebrating the 4th of July in all its Main Street gaudiness, given their Stars and Stripes Forever hymnal renditions before whatever athletic endeavour, given their Super Bowl Sunday flypasts, given their endless Jeopardy contestants' knowledge of the most arcane American Revolution trivia, I figured American movie reviewers might view Che, a movie centring on the Cuban Revolution with a degree of sympathy.
Naïve me.
It’s a mug's game, determining how consequential a new movie will be: it may seem more important than those the past, because we talk about it, write about it, it affects us directly, appear more significant than anything on dvd. Steven Soderbergh's Che, for example. Here’s the reviewer from Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post:
MEET Che Guevara. Just think of him as Jesus plus Abraham Lincoln with a touch of Moses and Dr. Doug Ross. After 4½ hours of watching Dr. Ernesto "Che" Guevara heal the sick, teach the illiterate, daze the women, execute the lawless, defeat the corrupt, uplift the peasantry and spew the sound bite, I was convinced there would be a scene in which he turned water to Bacardi.
Che's point of view as the moment of expiration arrives, sharing with us a vision of a blinding white light as the furry comandante slips into Commie heaven. Say hi to the Rosenbergs for me! Fidel says, "See ya soon."
Ya dirty Commie bastard!
Soderbergh had been quoted, all over the place, saying: I was drawn to Che as a subject for a movie (or two) not only because his life reads like an adventure story, but because I am fascinated by the technical challenges that go along with implementing any large-scale political idea. I wanted to detail the mental and physical demands these two campaigns required, and illustrate the process by which a man born with an unshakable will discovers his own ability to inspire and lead others.
This is more or less the Che movie I enjoyed: a director telling his adventure story, about this interesting guy. But given that damned movie reviewer eye-of-the-beholder syndrome, it’ s not what many American newspaper reviewers saw.
At mrqe.com (movie review query engine), my favourite movie website, I scanned about 20 American big-city papers reviews. Not one connected the American Revolution with the Cuban Revolution. Not one alluded to overthrow of a brutal tyrant, Fulgencio Batista. Here’s Variety, the Hollywood tradepaper:
[Che ]does give …ample airing to communist ideological thinking -- and presents American and Latin American authorities so exclusively as cardboard mouthpieces of imperialism and abusive dictatorships, respectively … few people will likely see the picture, at least in its current state, that there’s little chance it will have much cultural impact other than by the fact of its very existence.
Aha! Cardboard mouthpieces of imperialism! And Fulgencio Batista was not an abusive dictator, nor a cardboard mouthpiece of imperialism. Nor was King George III. And the American Empire of 1959 was definitely not the British Empire of 1976. Got it.
At the San Francisco Chronicle, William Randolph Hearst’s first paper (and fictionalized in Citizen Kane, here’s what their guy wrote:
If Soderbergh made as idol-worshiping an epic about George Washington or Abraham Lincoln - actual heroes with tangible, positive legacies - people would gag at the naive treatment. Perhaps with "Che," the hope is that audiences might be confused or browbeaten into reverence, into just assuming they're missing something.
Right. Naive treatment. That George Washington – the actual hero! His revolutionary guard didn’t slaughter anybody. That cherry tree/Potomac River stuff happened just the way George said it did. Unlike those poor Cubans driven into Miami, Washington and his troops never drove 75,000 United Empire Loyalists out of their homes and farms, into woebegone Nova Scotia and the Eastern townships.
The Brits saw Che differently:
Soderbergh’s Che epic dismantles the cliches and myths to craft a dream-like if frustrating essay on the heroism and the claustrophobia of war, perfectly centred by a compelling star performance.
…virile, muscular film-making, with an effortlessly charismatic performance by Benicio del Toro in the lead role.
Perhaps it will even come to be seen as this director's flawed masterpiece: enthralling but structurally fractured - the second half is much clearer and more sure-footed than the first - and at times frustratingly reticent, unwilling to attempt any insight into Che's interior world. We see only Che the public man, the legendary comandante, defiant to the last.
Canadians of course - fail miserably at revolutions - and so are ill-placed to judge them. We had the William Lyon Mackenzie’s Rebellion of 1837 of course, but that only lasted less than an hour, then both sides ran away. Or in more recent times, our Quebec Revolutions have been voting Referenda, whose questions are inscrutable. Nobody of course, is going to make an epic about a vote. We don’t have a rallying war cry – the land of the free and the home of the braaaavvvveee! - for a national anthem. Jets don’t scream overhead at our Grey Cup. Canadian sensibility when it comes to revolution is nul.
From the time Soderbergh’s movie premiered at Cannes last May, I suspect it never stood much of a chance. American distributors were balking at buying a 258-minute movie about a pinko Commie womanizing bastard serial-killer. Didn’t matter that Soderbergh'd made an epic. Didn’t matter that he employed spectacular techniques. Che now stands - no surprise here - a flop: has earned only slightly more than $1 milllion at box offices in North America.
I’ve always had considerable compassion for movie reviewers: a thankless pursuit – taken up by hacks of limited talent - providing informed opinion on uninformed movies, coerced by editors to be fawning in order to attract movie advertising, viewed by colleagues (much like sports writers), as pond scum within journalistic ranks. These dorks never looked at Che; all they saw was a bogeyman, hiding in their closet.
Here’s one last example, this from the New York Sun:
Mr. Del Toro invests Guevara with a winning and historically dubious innocence and patience that background Guevara's virulently Marxist and pro-Soviet dogma, and harsh approach to military discipline.
Just one final word before we abandon all discussion of Che: for those who missed The Motorcycle Diaries when first released, a sweeter, splendidly sentimentalized Che appears in this movie. American reviewers loved that Che. Soderbergh’s terrified them.
Naïve me.
It’s a mug's game, determining how consequential a new movie will be: it may seem more important than those the past, because we talk about it, write about it, it affects us directly, appear more significant than anything on dvd. Steven Soderbergh's Che, for example. Here’s the reviewer from Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post:
MEET Che Guevara. Just think of him as Jesus plus Abraham Lincoln with a touch of Moses and Dr. Doug Ross. After 4½ hours of watching Dr. Ernesto "Che" Guevara heal the sick, teach the illiterate, daze the women, execute the lawless, defeat the corrupt, uplift the peasantry and spew the sound bite, I was convinced there would be a scene in which he turned water to Bacardi.
Che's point of view as the moment of expiration arrives, sharing with us a vision of a blinding white light as the furry comandante slips into Commie heaven. Say hi to the Rosenbergs for me! Fidel says, "See ya soon."
Ya dirty Commie bastard!
Soderbergh had been quoted, all over the place, saying: I was drawn to Che as a subject for a movie (or two) not only because his life reads like an adventure story, but because I am fascinated by the technical challenges that go along with implementing any large-scale political idea. I wanted to detail the mental and physical demands these two campaigns required, and illustrate the process by which a man born with an unshakable will discovers his own ability to inspire and lead others.
This is more or less the Che movie I enjoyed: a director telling his adventure story, about this interesting guy. But given that damned movie reviewer eye-of-the-beholder syndrome, it’ s not what many American newspaper reviewers saw.
At mrqe.com (movie review query engine), my favourite movie website, I scanned about 20 American big-city papers reviews. Not one connected the American Revolution with the Cuban Revolution. Not one alluded to overthrow of a brutal tyrant, Fulgencio Batista. Here’s Variety, the Hollywood tradepaper:
[Che ]does give …ample airing to communist ideological thinking -- and presents American and Latin American authorities so exclusively as cardboard mouthpieces of imperialism and abusive dictatorships, respectively … few people will likely see the picture, at least in its current state, that there’s little chance it will have much cultural impact other than by the fact of its very existence.
Aha! Cardboard mouthpieces of imperialism! And Fulgencio Batista was not an abusive dictator, nor a cardboard mouthpiece of imperialism. Nor was King George III. And the American Empire of 1959 was definitely not the British Empire of 1976. Got it.
At the San Francisco Chronicle, William Randolph Hearst’s first paper (and fictionalized in Citizen Kane, here’s what their guy wrote:
If Soderbergh made as idol-worshiping an epic about George Washington or Abraham Lincoln - actual heroes with tangible, positive legacies - people would gag at the naive treatment. Perhaps with "Che," the hope is that audiences might be confused or browbeaten into reverence, into just assuming they're missing something.
Right. Naive treatment. That George Washington – the actual hero! His revolutionary guard didn’t slaughter anybody. That cherry tree/Potomac River stuff happened just the way George said it did. Unlike those poor Cubans driven into Miami, Washington and his troops never drove 75,000 United Empire Loyalists out of their homes and farms, into woebegone Nova Scotia and the Eastern townships.
The Brits saw Che differently:
Soderbergh’s Che epic dismantles the cliches and myths to craft a dream-like if frustrating essay on the heroism and the claustrophobia of war, perfectly centred by a compelling star performance.
…virile, muscular film-making, with an effortlessly charismatic performance by Benicio del Toro in the lead role.
Perhaps it will even come to be seen as this director's flawed masterpiece: enthralling but structurally fractured - the second half is much clearer and more sure-footed than the first - and at times frustratingly reticent, unwilling to attempt any insight into Che's interior world. We see only Che the public man, the legendary comandante, defiant to the last.
Canadians of course - fail miserably at revolutions - and so are ill-placed to judge them. We had the William Lyon Mackenzie’s Rebellion of 1837 of course, but that only lasted less than an hour, then both sides ran away. Or in more recent times, our Quebec Revolutions have been voting Referenda, whose questions are inscrutable. Nobody of course, is going to make an epic about a vote. We don’t have a rallying war cry – the land of the free and the home of the braaaavvvveee! - for a national anthem. Jets don’t scream overhead at our Grey Cup. Canadian sensibility when it comes to revolution is nul.
From the time Soderbergh’s movie premiered at Cannes last May, I suspect it never stood much of a chance. American distributors were balking at buying a 258-minute movie about a pinko Commie womanizing bastard serial-killer. Didn’t matter that Soderbergh'd made an epic. Didn’t matter that he employed spectacular techniques. Che now stands - no surprise here - a flop: has earned only slightly more than $1 milllion at box offices in North America.
I’ve always had considerable compassion for movie reviewers: a thankless pursuit – taken up by hacks of limited talent - providing informed opinion on uninformed movies, coerced by editors to be fawning in order to attract movie advertising, viewed by colleagues (much like sports writers), as pond scum within journalistic ranks. These dorks never looked at Che; all they saw was a bogeyman, hiding in their closet.
Here’s one last example, this from the New York Sun:
Mr. Del Toro invests Guevara with a winning and historically dubious innocence and patience that background Guevara's virulently Marxist and pro-Soviet dogma, and harsh approach to military discipline.
Just one final word before we abandon all discussion of Che: for those who missed The Motorcycle Diaries when first released, a sweeter, splendidly sentimentalized Che appears in this movie. American reviewers loved that Che. Soderbergh’s terrified them.
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