The Motorcycle Diaries (film)

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This article is about the film. For the book by Che Guevara, see The Motorcycle Diaries.
The Motorcycle Diaries

Theatrical poster
Directed by Walter Salles
Produced by Edgard Tenenbaum
Michael Nozik
Karen Tenkoff
Written by Screenplay:
José Rivera
Story:
Che Guevara
Alberto Granado
Starring Gael García Bernal
Rodrigo de la Serna
Music by Gustavo Santaolalla
Cinematography Eric Gautier
Editing by Daniel Rezende
Studio FilmFour
Distributed by Focus Features
Production company:
BD Cine
Release date(s) January 15, 2004 (premiere at Sundance)
August 27, 2004 (UK)
September 24, 2004 (United States)
Running time 126 minutes
Country Argentina
Chile
France
Germany
Peru
United Kingdom
United States
Language Spanish
Quechua

The Motorcycle Diaries (2004, Spanish: Diarios de motocicleta) is a biopic about the journey and written memoir of the 23-year-old Ernesto Guevara, who would years later become internationally known as the iconic Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. The film recounts the 1952 journey, initially by motorcycle, across South America by Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado. As the adventure centered around youthful hedonism unfolds, Guevara discovers himself transformed by his observations of the life of the impoverished indigenous peasantry. The road presents Ernesto Guevara and Alberto Granado a genuine picture of the Latin American identity. Through the characters they encounter on the road, Guevara and Granado learn the injustices the impoverished face and are exposed to people they would have never encountered in their hometown. The trip serves to expose a Latin American identity as well as explore the identity of one of its most memorable revolutionaries.

The screenplay is based primarily on Guevara's travelogue The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto "Che" Guevara, with additional context supplied by Back on the Road: A Journey Through Latin America by Alberto Granado. Guevara is played by Mexican actor Gael García Bernal, and Granado by the Argentine actor Rodrigo de la Serna, who is a second cousin to Che Guevara on his maternal side.[1] Directed by Brazilian director Walter Salles and written by Puerto Rican playwright José Rivera, the film was an international co-production among production companies from Argentina, the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Chile, Peru and France. The film's executive producers were Robert Redford, Paul Webster, and Rebecca Yeldham; the producers were Edgard Tenenbaum, Michael Nozik, and Karen Tenkoff; and the co-producers were Daniel Burman and Diego Dubcovsky.

Contents

[edit] Plot

"The Che of The Motorcycle Diaries is more akin to Jack Kerouac or Neal Cassady than Marx or Lenin."
— Paul Webster, executive producer [2]

In 1952, a semester before Ernesto "Fuser" Guevara is due to complete his medical degree, he and his older friend Alberto, a biochemist, leave Buenos Aires in order to travel across the South American continent in search of fun and adventure. While there is a goal at the end of their journey - they intend to work in a leper colony in Peru - the main purpose is tourism. They want to see as much of Latin America as they can, more than 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) in just four months, and Alberto's purpose is also to court as many Latin American women as will fall for his pick-up lines. Their initial method of transport is Alberto's ancient and leaky but functional Norton 500 motorcycle christened La Poderosa ("The Mighty One").

Their route is ambitious. They head north, aim to cross the Andes, travel along the coast of Chile, across the Atacama Desert and into the Peruvian Amazon and reach Venezuela just in time for Alberto's 30th birthday, April 2. Due to La Poderosa's breakdown, they are forced to travel at a much slower pace, and make it to Caracas in July.

Actors Gael García Bernal (front) and Rodrigo de la Serna (back) depicting Che Guevara and Alberto Granado aboard their Norton 500 motorcycle christened La Poderosa ("The Mighty One").

During their expedition, Guevara and Granado encounter the poverty of the indigenous peasants, and the movie assumes a greater seriousness once the men gain a better sense of the disparity between the "haves" and "have-nots" of Latin America. In Chile, the pleasure travelers encounter a couple forced onto the road because of their communist beliefs. In a fire-lit scene, Ernesto and Alberto admit to the couple that they are not out looking for work as well. The duo accompany the couple to the Chuquicamata copper mine, and Guevara becomes angry at the treatment of the workers. There is also an instance of recognition when Ernesto, on a river ship, looks down at the poor people on the smaller boat hitched behind. Ernesto's connection to people in need is visceral and tactile throughout the film. It shows in the way he smoothes the forehead of a terminally ill woman who cannot afford a proper doctor.

However, it is a visit to the Incan ruins of Machu Picchu that inspires something in Ernesto. His sombre musings are then focused on how a civilization capable of building such beauty could be destroyed by the creators of the polluted urban decay of Lima. His reflections are interrupted by Alberto, who shares with him a dream to peacefully revolutionize modern South America. Ernesto quickly responds: "A revolution without guns? It will never work."

In Peru, they volunteer for three weeks at the San Pablo leper colony. There, Guevara sees both physically and metaphorically the division of society - the staff live on the north side of a river, separated from the lepers living on the south. Guevara also refuses to wear rubber gloves during his visit choosing instead to shake bare hands with startled leper inmates.

"Every generation needs a journey story; every generation needs a story about what it is to be transformed by geography, what it is to be transformed by encounters with cultures and people that are alien from yourself, and you know that age group 15 to 25, that’s the perfect generation to get on a motorcycle, to hit the road, to put on your backpack and just go out."
—  José Rivera, screenwriter, NPR [3]

At the end of the film, after his sojourn at the leper colony, Guevara confirms his nascent egalitarian, anti-authority impulses, while making a birthday toast, which is also his first political speech. In it he evokes a pan-Latin American identity that transcends the arbitrary boundaries of nation and race. These encounters with social injustice transform the way Guevara sees the world, and by implication motivates his later political activities as a revolutionary.

Guevara makes his symbolic "final journey" that night when despite his asthma, he chooses to swim across the river that separates the two societies of the leper colony, to spend the night in a leper shack, instead of in the cabins of the doctors. As they bid each other farewell, Alberto reveals that his birthday was not in fact April 2, but rather August 8, and that the stated goal was simply a motivator: Ernesto replies that he knew all along. The film is closed with an appearance by the real 82-year-old Alberto Granado, along with pictures from the actual journey and a mention of Che Guevara's eventual 1967 CIA-assisted execution in the Bolivian jungle.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Development

To prepare for the role of the early Che Guevara, Bernal went through six months of intense preparation. This groundwork included reading "every biography" about Che, travelling to Cuba to speak with Guevara's family, and consulting with Guevara's still living travel partner Alberto Granado.[4] Moreover, Bernal adopted an Argentine accent and spent 14 weeks reading the works of José Martí,[5] Karl Marx and Pablo Neruda (Che's favorite poet). Bernal told reporters "I feel a lot of responsibility. I want to do it well because of what Che represents to the world. He is a romantic. He had a political consciousness that changed Latin America."[6] As Bernal experienced locales in Chile, Peru and Bolivia; with social conditions unchanged or worsened since Guevara passed through a half-century before, he took to heart Guevara's internationalist assertion in a "fiction of nations." Bernal believes this process allowed him to "engage with Latin America", in much the same way he believes that the early Guevara had.[5] According to Bernal, the role crystallized his "own sense of duty" because Che "decided to live on the side of the mistreated, to live on the side of the people who have no justice - and no voice." In surmising the similarities between his own personal transformation, and Guevara's, Bernal posits that "my generation is awakening, and we're discovering a world full of incredible injustice."[5]

[edit] Film locales

"We were re-enacting a journey that was done 50 years ago, and what's surprising is that the social problems of Latin America are the same. Which is heartbreaking in a way, but it also makes you feel how important it is to tell the story."
— Gael García Bernal [7]

In a journey that lasts eight months, the partners travel over 14,000 kilometres, from Argentina through Chile, Peru, and Colombia to Venezuela. Key locations along the journey described in the film include: In Argentina, Buenos Aires, Miramar, Buenos Aires, Villa Gesell, San Martín de los Andes, Lago Frías, Patagonia; in Chile, Temuco, Los Angeles, Valparaiso, Atacama desert, Chuquicamata; in Peru, Cuzco, Machu Picchu, Lima; The San Pablo Leper Colony; Leticia, Colombia and Caracas, Venezuela.

Reviewer Nick Cowen of The Daily Telegraph described the scenery as "visually stunning" while remarking that "the cinematography of fog-cloaked mountains, lush, green forests and sunburnt deserts is breathtakingly beautiful enough to serve as a travel advert for the entire continent."[8]

  • The crew filmed in the same San Pablo Leper Colony that Guevara himself had visited. According to Bernal, 85% of the people suffering leprosy in the film were actual lepers, with some of them having lived there when Che and Granado worked at the colony.[9]
  • The scene which features Guevara's character swimming across to the other side of the river, was filmed during three nights in which Bernal swam across the actual Amazon river.[9]

[edit] Soundtrack

See The Motorcycle Diaries (soundtrack).

The score for The Motorcycle Diaries was composed by Gustavo Santaolalla. The film's soundtrack was released on the Deutsche Grammophon label in 2004.

[edit] Distribution

The film was first presented at the Sundance Film Festival on January 15, 2004. Later it was featured at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival on May 19.

The film screened at many other film festivals, including: the Auckland International Film Festival, New Zealand; the Copenhagen International Film Festival, Denmark; the Espoo Film Festival, Finland; the Telluride Film Festival, United States; the Toronto Film Festival, Canada; the Vancouver International Film Festival, Canada; the Celebrating Literature in Cinema Filmfestival Frankfurt, Germany; the Morelia Film Festival, Mexico; and others.

[edit] Release dates

  • United States: January 15, 2004 (premiere at Sundance Film Festival)
  • France: July 7, 2004
  • Argentina: July 29, 2004
  • United Kingdom: August 27, 2004
  • United States: September 24, 2004
  • Chile: October 21, 2004
  • Germany: October 28, 2004

[edit] Critical reception

"The Motorcycle Diaries may not provide any satisfactory answers as to how a 23-year-old medical student went on to become arguably most famous revolutionary of the latter half of the 20th Century, but it has an undeniable charm in that it imbues the memories of youth with a sense of altruism and purity – which are complemented by the scenery. It's an incomplete portrait to be sure, but it's a gorgeous depiction of two best friends riding unknowingly into the history books."
— The Daily Telegraph [8]

The New York Times film critic, A.O. Scott, wrote that "in Mr. Salles's hands what might have been a schematic story of political awakening becomes a lyrical exploration of the sensations and perceptions from which a political understanding of the world emerges."[10] Gregory Weinkauf of the Dallas Observer espoused that the film "delivers as both biography and road movie, and proves itself a deceptively humble epic, an illuminating part of the Che legacy."[11] Claudia Puig of USA Today postulated that "the movie achieves an impressive blend of emotional resonance and light entertainment" while describing it as "more coming-of-age story than biopic" and "a transformative adventure well worth watching."[12]

Paula Nechak of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer praised director Walter Salles by remarking that he "presents the evolutionary course of a young man who coincidentally became the dorm-room poster boy for an idealistic generation, and captures the lovely, heart-and-eye-opening ode to youthful possibility with affection and compassion."[13] While Washington Post critic Desson Thomson lent praise for the films starring actor by observing that "what Bernal and this well-wrought movie convey so well is the charisma that would soon become a part of human history, and yes, T-shirts."[14]

Among the film's detractors was Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, who described the film's positive reviews as "a matter of Political Correctness, I think; it is uncool to be against Che Guevara." Ebert also criticized the film's characterization: "seen simply as a film, The Motorcycle Diaries is attenuated and tedious. We understand that Ernesto and Alberto are friends, but that's about all we find out about them; they develop none of the complexities of other on-the-road couples... Nothing is startling or poetic."[15] Jessica Winter of The Village Voice criticized the film's simplistic representation of the peasantry, describing "the young men's encounters with conscience-pricking, generically noble locals" who are occasionally assembled "to face the camera in a still life of heroic, art-directed suffering".[16]

The online review aggregator Metacritic gives the film a score of 75, indicating generally favorable reviews, while Rotten Tomatoes records 82% favorable reviews among 148 reviews.[17] The film also received a standing ovation at the 2004 Sundance film festival.[18]

[edit] Awards

Wins

[edit] Related films

  • Chasing Che, 2007, developed by National Geographic Adventure, A ten-week series featured on V-me.
  • Travelling with Che Guevara, 2004, directed by Gianni Mina, Documentary, 110 minutes.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Durbin, Karen. The New York Times, Arts Section, September 12, 2004. Last accessed: March 23, 2008.
  2. ^ Just A Pretty Face? by Sean O'Hagan, The Observer, July 11, 2004
  3. ^ Thirty Years After His Death, Che Guevara Still an Icon by NPR Weekend Edition Sunday, October 3, 2004
  4. ^ New Latin Revolution: Interview with Gael Garcia Bernal
  5. ^ a b c The Citizen Actor: Gael Garcia Bernal's Sense of Duty by Jesse Ashlock, RES Magazine
  6. ^ Che Trippers by Lawrence Osborne, The New York Observer, June 15, 2003
  7. ^ Sympathy for the Rebel by Jessica Winter, Village Voice, September 28 2004
  8. ^ a b Wheels On Film: The Motorcycle Diaries by Nick Cowen and Hari Patience, The Daily Telegraph April 27 2009
  9. ^ a b New Latin Revolution: Interview with Gale Garcia Bernal
  10. ^ Scott A.O. The New York Times, film review, September 24, 2004.
  11. ^ "The Importance of Being Ernesto", By Gregory Weinkauf, September 30 2004, Dallas Observer
  12. ^ "Guevara's life takes shape in 'Diaries", By Claudia Puig, USA TODAY, Sept 27 2004
  13. ^ "Motorcycle Diaries': On the road with a young Che", by Paula Nechak, October 1 2004, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
  14. ^ "Viva Che!", By Desson Thomson, Washington Post, October 1, 2004
  15. ^ Ebert, Roger. Chicago Sun-Times, film review, October 1, 2004.
  16. ^ Jessica Winter, 'Child of the Revolution', The Village Voice, September 14, 2004.
  17. ^ The Motorcycle Diaries at Metacritic, accessed 23 March, 2008; The Motorcycle Diaries at Rotten Tomatoes, accessed 23 March, 2008.
  18. ^ Sundance Flips for Che Guevara By Roger Friedman, January 19, 2004, Fox News
  19. ^ Cannes Film Festival awards. Last accessed: March 23, 2008.

[edit] External links

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