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The Motorcycle
Diaries
Release Date: September 24,
2004 (NY, LA; wider release: October 1)
Studio: Focus Features
Director: Walter Salles
Screenwriter: Jose Rivera
Starring: Gael García Bernal, Jaime Azócar, Rodrigo De la Serna,
Ulises Dumont, Facundo Espinosa, Susana Lanteri, Mía Maestro, Mercedes Morán,
Jean Pierre Noher, Gustavo Pastorini
Genre: Drama
MPAA Rating: R (for language)
Official Website:
MotorcycleDiariesmovie.com
Plot Summary: In 1952, two young Argentines,
Ernesto Guevara and Alberto Granado, set out on a road trip to discover the real
Latin America. Ernesto is a 23-year-old medical student specializing in
leprology, and Alberto, 29, is a biochemist. The film follows the young men as
they unveil the rich and complex human and social topography of the Latin
American continent. With a highly romantic sense of adventure, the two friends
leave their familiar surroundings in Buenos Aires on a rickety 1939 Norton 500.
Although the bike breaks down in the course of their eight-month journey, they
press onward, hitching rides along the way. As they begin to see a different
Latin America in the people they meet on the road, the diverse geography they
encounter begins to reflect their own shifting perspectives. They continue to
the heights of Machu Picchu, where the majestic ruins and the extraordinary
significance of the Inca heritage have a profound impact on the young men. As
they arrive at a leper colony deep in the Peruvian Amazon, the two are beginning
to question the value of progress as defined by economic systems that leave so
many people beyond their reach. Their experiences at the colony awaken within
them the men they will later become by defining the ethical and political
journey they will take in their lives.
Reviewed by Peter
Veugelaers © 2005
- Words escape me ... ecstasy
The volatile South America of 50 years past has a litany of
stories about military coups and political unrest; The Motorcycle Diaries
is about the birth of a vision in Che Guevara for Latin and South America’s
cohesion, while he travels, “just to travel”, throughout South America during
1951-52 with companion Alberto Granado (played by international newcomer Rodrigo
de la Serna).
A true story based on Guevara’s memoirs of the road trip, it
foreshadows the rise of Guevara who became a communist revolutionary leader in
Cuba during the 1950s and 60s. Documentation and interviews with his travelling
companion Granado, who is still alive, were also researched for the movie.
This
is not overtly concerning their politics, however. Taking the story from Buenos
Ares (their home at the time), into Chile, Peru, Columbia and Venezuela, (the
movie was shot in 30 locations), this instead follows the coming of age and self
discovery of the key characters during their travels where their ideas were
formed and embryonic, conveyed poetically in some scenes as Guevara in voice
over relays his thoughts in letter to his mother.
Thanks to their engaging performances, direction by Walter
Salles, and an understated script, two years in the making, this is a winner.
The naturallness of the film shooting
is evident on the screen. Director Salles, who used
Super 16 format, is quoted on the UK’s Channel 4 website: “Most
of the time, I refrained from imposing a ‘mise en scene,’ trying to be carried
by the flow of what we were finding on the road, and not imposing pre-conceived
ideas.”
The first half of The Motorcycle Diaries is an
energetic, zestful and youthful road movie featuring laugh out loud moments as
the overweight and wise cracking Granado earnestly jests the thoughtful and
sensitive Ernesto (Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal) and underlines a successful
attempt at temperamental buddy-buddy histrionics.
Part of our enjoyment is viewing real flesh and bones
characters succeed and react under difficult circumstances like facing
environmental hazards and perils and surviving without having enough money.
Relying on the locals’ gullibility when they almost fall for Ernesto and
Granado’s grandiose stories about how, as doctors, secures an immediate open
home (and food) policy. Occasionally, it works. The medical students are only
half way there, though.
Their fossilised motorcycle, the “mighty one”, as they call
it, otherwise known as a 1939 Norton 500, supplies opportunities for vistas of
the South American country side as the two ride into occasional moments of road
rage and anxiety.
The
second half is supposed to naturally evolve from the first, which held a
rhythmic balance between road action and pit stops. Contrary to the filmmaker’s
intentions the second half does not inherently naturalise from the beginning,
the last hour or so is more a documented effect as Ernesto emphasises with the
predicaments of the people and engages on a leper colony. These scenes are
important for the audience to understand the evolution of Ernesto’s journey. But
the effect is suspiciously semi-political and is incoherent, unevenly balancing
a road movie with the appearance of a slow downed quasi-documentary style where
one is just waiting for the sympathetic voice of the television journalist. All
the same there is striking photography of the Andes and as a travelogue it
cannot be beat. Subtitled in English.
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