46th NYFF Interview: Steven Soderbergh (Che)

Certainly the most ambitious film to have its United States debut at the New York Film Festival, Che has been a dream project of director Steven Soderbergh for many years. Clocking in at 4 ½ hours, almost completely subtitled and only covering two military campaigns the film requires the audience to remain actively engaged. I imagine this will be hard for the average moviegoer and it’s not surprising that IFC has decided to release it in two separate films for distribution. I have my own problems with it. I felt it was very informative yet not emotionally engaging. But none-the-less as a film fanatic I have to appreciate the ambition and drive put into making an epic film about one of the most politically significant figures of the 20th century. Soderbergh is one of those rare filmmakers who has had Hollywood back his vision time after time. He is given modest budgets and a large degree of creative control, working on both small and large productions and I believe he is one of the most important directors working today. Thus, it was a pleasure to finally meet him at the 46th annual New York Film Festival.

Q: This film, as we just saw it, is over four hours long but is due to be released as two separate films. What is the fundamental distinction between them?
Steven Soderbergh: Well the producer, Laura Bickford, Benicio and I started talking about Che over eight years ago and we knew that it had to be more than just your average two hour affair to really comprehend all that the man was about. There was his rise to prominence with the Cuban revolution and his fall in Bolivia. So while filming that’s what we tried to keep in mind. But it wasn’t until I saw the film screened in Cannes this year that I discovered something else: between the two films Che has wrestled with the issues of engagement. Should he be complacent or should he act? Should he participate or observe? In the end he choose engagement and that’s what changes about him between the two films.

Q: How much source material did you have to go on?
SS: There’s been a lot of documentation on Che’s life and actions over the years. I mean if you walk into a bookstore there’s an entire wall dedicated to him. Plus, we talked to all of his surviving comrades that were willing to talk to us. Basically, we did as much research as we could. Sometimes I felt like we were doing too much and leaving nothing up to the imagination We were literally inundated with information and as one of my consultants, John Lee Anderson, said at Cannes: “There’s really a million different Che’s. He means something different to everyone.” At a certain point the core creative team behind this film had to decide what to use and what not to use. Mostly this was a matter of exclusion, I knew much more about what I didn’t want to do than what I wanted to do. I wanted to avoid scenes that were too typical. For example, I didn’t want there to be a scene where someone asks: “hey why do they call you Che?” Or something like Che’s iconic hat blowing off in battle. That really helped to hone the direction we wanted to go in.

Q: Che’s time in Africa, in the Congo, is not referenced in this or, for that matter, any film about Che. Could you talk about your decision not to depict the events there?
SS: Well the short answer to that question is that we didn’t have another 15 million dollars to shoot that. We talked about putting it in the film; the story of Che in the Congo is absolutely fascinating. We sketched out an idea of how a film like that would go largely based on a very self-critical manuscript that he had published about his time there. But although it was an interesting story, it didn’t really fit in with the “book-end” philosophy that we had come up with. When we first started talking about the film we were going to have it take place only in Bolivia. It wasn’t until we got halfway through writing that we discovered that the film wouldn’t really make a lot of sense unless you knew what happened in Cuba. You really have to see what happened in Cuba to understand why Che thought they could pull this off

Q: The four-hour cut we just saw was described as “road show cut.” Will people be able to see this cut when it comes out and are you satisfied with the release arrangements?
SS: Here’s our plan: when the film enters a specific market; New York, LA, Chicago etc. for one week, on one screen, people will be able to see the road show cut. There will be printed programs like the ones you just got, which will have detailed credits on both films. I mean I think that’s the way I would like people to see Che, I realize it’s a lot to ask for someone to give up their whole day. I guess my only argument is that we’re making a cinematic demand on the audience the way Che would make a similar demand on his troops.

Q: When did you first discover Che?
SS: Like most Americans I heard his name in history class and of course, there’s that image of him that’s on all those shirts and buttons. One of the great things about being a filmmaker is being paid to educate yourself and before this film I had always thought of the Cuban revolution as being all Fidel. I didn’t know too much about the life of this other person. I had no idea about the amazing transformation of this man, from becoming a medic to becoming a leader. I think the thing I learned about him that was most interesting to me is what a hard-ass he was. During the Cuban revolution most people wanted to be with Castro because he was fun. Che was a very, very strict disciplinarian and most of his troops admitted that: “you had to love him for free.”

Q: How hard was it to secure financing for this project?
SS: I’m glad I’m not looking for financing right now! It was very complicated but we knew that it would be. What it really took was a couple of key individuals sticking it out for a long time who believed in the ultimate commercial viability of Che Guevara. I mean the weird paradox about this guy is he’s at the front of the Marxist/Leninist ideology but if you stick his face on anything it sells. It’s a very weird situation and I really believed if we could just get this thing made, it would find enough of an audience to make it’s money back.

Q: What was the shooting schedule like?
SS: The material dictated a pretty intense shooting schedule. We had 39 days for each part with and 8-day break in between. 39 days is five days less than I had to shoot Oceans 11 and that took place in one location. So we had to move very quickly and there were aspects of that that were really exhilarating and aspects that were frustrating, but we had no choice but to accept. At the end of the day we had to get it done.

Q: Could you explain the aesthetic differences between the two films?
SS: Well I was trying to come up with a simple way to create a different sensation for each part. The widescreen that we used in the first film I considered to be a more “Hollywood” oriented format. We used that to document the Cuban revolution because I felt that story had the trajectory of a classic Hollywood war film. It’s a classic tale of overcoming the odds, so from the visuals to the music I wanted it to have a very “classic feel.” The second film, which was not widescreen, I wanted things to feel less settled. I wanted people to feel that the outcome was not clear even from the very beginning. So the second part is not as wide and it’s all handheld, gradually through the second part the camera finally starts to get closer to him.

Q: Looking at the world as it stands today, what do you think is the purpose of making a film about the life of Che Guevara?
SS: I guess I believe that any movie that accurately depicts anyone’s life, that isn’t a fantasy, is by definition a political film because everyone is affected by politics. Whether it’s a Traffic or Erin Brokovich, any film that looks at things in a straightforward fashion I think you could argue is a political film. These are political films in the sense that there’s this ideology being expressed, but that’s not what ultimately drew me to make them. I’m not a communist. I said to someone the other week that there wasn’t even a place for me in the society that Che was trying to create. He said there’s no real use for artists within the state, so he didn’t have much use for the kind of the stuff that I do. I’m sure, personally, he probably would have hated me. But I can still look at him and find him to be one of the most compelling political figures of the last century.