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The Motorcycle Diaries
Directed by: Walter Salles
Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal
Genre:
Foreign Language/
Independent
Run Time: 126
min.
Release Date:
September 2004
On The Web:
Official
Site
Teaser:
Movie Trailer
Reviewed by
Byron Merritt |
This is a
tough review to write because of the subject matter we’re dealing with:
a militant revolutionary who became Castro's
right-hand man during the 1959 Cuban revolt. But here in THE
MOTORCYCLE DIARIES film, we don’t see this man; we see instead the
formation of the person whom this man (Ernesto "Che" Guevara played by
the talented Gael García Bernal,
THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP) would become.
He’s a young idealist living in South America when he and a friend
(Alberto Granado played by up-and-coming actor
Rodrigo De la Serna)
decide to take a road trip across the continent before bellying down
into their chosen carriers in medicine.
The film succeeds in giving us a very myopic view of these two men:
Guevara for the initial changes he begins to go through as he witnesses
injustices to the low and poor; Granado for his love of women and
grudging dedication to Guevara. We travel with them on a 1939 Norton 500
motorcycle (my hat’s off to the two actors who had to actually learn to
ride one of these behemoths!) as they argue with each other over money,
their deficient form of transportation, and Guevara’s unflinching
honesty when asked delicate questions (this is brought into focus when
they first meet a man — who looks very German — in a
small village and asks Che and Granado to look at a lump on his neck,
which Granado diagnoses as a cyst but Che calls a tumor).
The cinematography was done exceptionally well on a small budget. The
beauty of
Machu Picchu, the
green forests of Peru, the nothingness of various deserts, all added
great visuals for the viewer.
The film’s faults lay with its omissions. Yes, Che was a thinking man.
Yes, Che was concerned with humanity as a whole. But Che was also
somewhat of a bigot. He didn’t like blacks, Jews, and homosexuals (read
the book The Motorcycle Diaries.
So when he shows his concern for lepers in a colony along the Amazon
River, we’re only see a part of this complex man. Granted, for a film
you need to have your audience empathize with the main character, but
this also pulls us into the shallow end of the depths that this man was.
The convoluted sections of Che’s life might have added an extra level of
understanding for film viewers, especially those who have knowledge of
his later life when he becomes an executioner of spies and deserters,
quite a dichotomy compared to the Hippocratic oath he took when becoming
a doctor — the oath basically promising to "do no harm."
But, again, I can understand why the film makers decided to omit these
sections. We are, after all, seeing only the early life of Che, a
fomenting of ideas that would change his life forever. But I think we
have to be careful when looking at such a potentially volatile subject
and controversial man, and only show the "sunnier" side of Che to a new
generation of movie-goers. More research is needed if one really wishes
to understand the levels of Che.
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Image from The Motorcycle
Diaries
DVD cost: $12.99
Purchase:
BestPrices.com
Film Review Stew
Favorite? No.
Stew Poo-Poo? No.
Newsworthy:
When Ernesto and Alberto
are walking with the bike and reading the newspaper "El Diario Austral"
Alberto complains because they misspelled his surname, instead of
Granado, they wrote "Granados". The Austral newspaper still exists, so,
when the movie was being filmed, the newspaper wrote a new article about
the making of the film and (this time deliberately) misspelled Alberto's
surname again, 50 years later.
Movie Quote: "Pretend
this money doesn't exist. It's off limits."
Other Actors/Actresses
from The Motorcycle Diaries
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