Wednesday

I have now seen the first part of Che and am preparing to watch the second part tomorrow. This news alone will tell you that I thought the first part was good. I would say that it is almost brilliant, but I think I'll only really know what to say when I've seen the second part. Steven Soderbergh has said that initially he was only going to make the film about Che's actions in Bolivia (part two), but that the scope naturally broadened to Cuba as well (part one), so I have hopes that the second part will be better. Perhaps, though, it will be worse, or too clever, as Soderbergh sometimes is. The first part, however, was good, perfectly understated and brilliantly performed by Benicio del Toro. I really don't think I've ever seen a better performance by an actor, although he is recreating a real person, rather than a character from a script (is there a difference?). Soderbergh has said that he wanted to avoid a biographical film, and hence deleted anything about Che's private life, but this isn't the point. The problem with the biographical film is that it subsumes narrative drama under actual events. Instead of the rhythm of a story, with carefully orchestrated peaks and troughs, we get the random pacing of an actual life. Nonetheless, Che so far excels like no other biographical film, and I can't wait for part two.