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"Ché:" like Guernica or the war paintings of Goya, high art

Posted by tinear (A) on March 21, 2009 at 08:58:56

occasionally can make very powerful political and social statements.
Last night, I saw both parts of the film and yes, Benicio Del Toro is magnificent: not at all like Scott in "Patton" or O'Toole in "Lawrence of Arabia" both of whom portrayed their larger-than-life characters well, larger than life. Del Toro's portrait is far more approachable, more personal, and realistic--- art without ANY discernible artifice. Here is a man that has charisma but who leads with his heart, not his ego (actor and character).
What is it that would lead a young man, a doctor that came from a comfortable upper-class existence in Argentina, to risk his life helping a small group of soldiers in a tiny country fight its brutal dictator?
And, when the unlikely victory was achieved, to then travel to Africa and S. America similarly to spearhead revolts?
It would be fair to say Del Toro carries the 4-hour film quite easily, maintaining our interest in the character through no discernible arsenal of a modern actor's tricks: it is eerily similar to watching a documentary.
The direction, by Soderbergh, is all but invisible. He too eschews cliché. There is none of the action trickery or bravura camerawork and editing we've come to expect since "Private Ryan." None of the stock secondary military figures with their personal stories to endear them. There is nothing to soften what so skillfully is shown: the feeling of what it must be like to subsist in primitive conditions and to be, on a daily basis, remorselessly hunted with very little chance of survival.
The effect of the film is mystifying, disorienting, and bewildering: it is so different from what a film goer expects from a "war" or "action" or even a "biographic" film.

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