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All about Cuba - 1

Tuesday, 6th January 2009

Well, that was a strange experience. Part One of Steven Soderbergh's beautifully shot film about Che Guevara is painfully slow at times: after a while I almost felt I was trudging across the Sierra Maestra at the tail-end of a column of rebels. Jumping back and forth between the final years of Batista and a 1964 visit to Manhattan, the movie seems intent on rendering every last detail of Guevara's career, yet ends up telling us very little. Even Fidel Castro seems a cipher. So, in the end, I settled for admiring the editing, the acting, the locations - everything, in fact, but the film itself. I'll still go to see Part Two, partly because there's always the chance it will turn out to be an improvement, partly because it's rare to see a mainstream film turn its back on Hollywood conventions. But I won't build my hopes up. A.O. Scott's assessment in the NYT was very fair, I thought.

Some slushy music on the trailer. I may be going mad, but I don't recall hearing it on the soundtrack.