--Ernesto Che Guevara in The Motorcycle Diaries
Like all good journeys, The Motorcycle Diaries is as much a discovery of self as of place. The film tells the story of Ernesto Guevara's epic motorcycle tour of Latin America with his friend Alberto Granado, from Argentina, through Chile, Peru, Columbia, and ending in Venezuela. Together they discover the country and the people, all from Granado’s capricious and testy Norton 500 motorcycle.
Guevara (Gael García Bernal) gradually awakens to the plight of the peasants and workers he encounters, attempting to touch them and, more critically for who he will become, allowing them to touch him. Though he will become a leader of the Cuban revolution, and will embody a fascist-tinged revolutionary ideal, this film is not about politics so much as how someone can be profoundly changed by contact with our common humanity. It is also the inner geography of a boy transforming to a man.
Authentically shooting on many of the journey’s actual locations, Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles directs The Motorcycle Diaries with a lyrical beauty and observant humanity that flows the film like a languid but purposeful river. As Salles has noted, “We basically tried to film the story as if it were unfolding before our very eyes.” Time and place are allowed to entrance us, and if we don’t get inside the skin of Guevara like we should, we at least feel as if he ends up in a different place, inside, that he was at the beginning. The entrancing, lyrical music, composed and performed by Gustovo Santaolalla, is the perfect soundtrack to awakening and personal change.
Co-producer of Fernando Meirelles’ magnificent City of God, Salles is a filmmaker to watch. I eagerly anticipate seeing what he did with the Japanese horror remake Dark Water, which is in my Zip.ca rental queue.
The Motorcycle Diaries is available on DVD.
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