Soderbergh explains difficulties, length of two-part film Che

Last Updated: Wednesday, September 10, 2008 | 10:51 PM ET

CBC News

Actor-producer Benicio Del Toro, left, and director Steven Soderbergh speak during a press conference for the two-part film Che during the Toronto International Film Festival on Wednesday. (Carlo Allegri/AP Photo)

Steven Soderbergh didn't know much about Che Guevara when movie producer Laura Bickford and actor Benicio Del Toro first approached him to make a film about the Latin American revolutionary icon, the director said in Toronto on Wednesday.

However, he simply felt obligated to do it as a filmmaker, the Oscar-winning American director told a press conference at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The final cut of Soderbergh's two-part film Che is screening at the festival this week, slightly trimmed after its debut at the Cannes festival in May.

"My relationship with this movie is different from any other movie that I've made because I felt obligated to make it. That's different from wanting to make it," Soderbergh said. "I had the feeling, even at the beginning, that this film would be difficult, and that made me feel more obligated to say yes.

"When these sorts of opportunities present themselves, if you say no … then I don't know what you're doing making films."

Bickford and Del Toro first brought the idea to the director while he was making his cross-border ensemble drama Traffic. Seven years of research has gone into the film, Bickford said. Throughout that time, Del Toro added, people around the world added to the pressure the film's creators were already feeling about the project.

"Anywhere south of New York City, even in New York City, years before we even shot anything, people would say 'A Che Guevara movie! It's great!'" said the actor, who also serves as a co-producer of Che.

"In a way, the movie was already in motion before we even stepped on the gas."

However, what started as a single, two-hour film about Guevara's Bolivian campaign soon became problematic.

"As we got further and further into developing that script, we began to feel that Bolivia — without the context of Cuba — didn't make a lot of sense," Soderbergh said.

A year of trying to create a script that encompassed more of Guevara's life story resulted in something "unreadable," Soderbergh said, so the team decided to split the project into two. The final cut, at nearly four and a half hours long, "was really the shortest we could make it," Bickford said.

Calling the two-part production "a very subjective, personal take" on Guevara's story, Soderbergh said the intention was simple: "We wanted to know why this iconic [Alberto] Korda image is still plastered on everything from tote bags to coffee mugs to beer bottles. Why, 40 years after [Guevara's] death, is his image still resonating even with people who don't know what it represents?"

What matters now, Soderbergh said, is attracting a curious audience, whether they be people who bear Guevara's image no differently "than wearing a t-shirt with the Rolling Stones tongue logo on it" or those already familiar with the revolutionary and his beliefs.

"As long as they sit through the film and at some point say 'I didn't know that' or 'I didn't know that this happened' or 'I didn't know these set of circumstances played out' … it's great."