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Lew Crippen · 12-05-2004, 07:48 PM

To a unified South America!

The Motorcycle Diaries

is a road trip movie that certainly begins in a non-political fashion. Two young men decide to drive from Buenos Aries to the top of South America (a peninsula just west of Lake Maraciabo in Venezuela. Strangley, for a road movie, we never know if they reach their destination or not—but then for this film that is beside the point. The destination is not their physical journey, but rather their spiritual one.

As Ernesto Guevara de la Serna (Gael Garcia Bernal), later known to the world as Che Guevara and Alberto Granado (Rodrigo De la Serna) leave their comfortable, Buenos Aries environs and take to the road we are presented with, first their old beliefs and system being examined and discarded (though in truth Guevara’s girlfriend discards him first) and new ones replacing them (most especially as they the Andes and then Peru).

By the movie’s end, the two are, by their own admission, changed, though they (or especially Guevara) are not yet sure as to how or why.

Both Bernal and De la Serna have plenty of onscreen presence and they work well together. We are also shown plenty of great faces of indignious people in the movie, which is outstanding cinematically, but it would be a bit better if the two were not so clearly being presented as saviors to the masses. Guevara most of all is shown as saintly. For example although the young men talk about secducing women as they embark on their journey, Guevara is shown as always pulling back. The two arrive at a leper hospital and immedialty begin to take more personal care of the lepers than those who had been doing so for years. And so it goes.

Finally one small quibble: for a movie that has taken great care to shoot on location and reproduce South America of the 50s, they completely missed the last shot, with a plane taking off from Caracas. We are shown a plain or perhaps a savannah, but in fact Caracas is a mountain valley. A small thing no doubt, but it left me wishing that they had gone the extra mile.

12-05-2004, 07:48 PM	#242 of 298
Lew Crippen Member Location: Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexíco Join Date: May 2002 Local Time: 10:36 PM Local Date: 10-06-2008 Posts: 11,410	To a unified South America! The Motorcycle Diaries is a road trip movie that certainly begins in a non-political fashion. Two young men decide to drive from Buenos Aries to the top of South America (a peninsula just west of Lake Maraciabo in Venezuela. Strangley, for a road movie, we never know if they reach their destination or not—but then for this film that is beside the point. The destination is not their physical journey, but rather their spiritual one. As Ernesto Guevara de la Serna (Gael Garcia Bernal), later known to the world as Che Guevara and Alberto Granado (Rodrigo De la Serna) leave their comfortable, Buenos Aries environs and take to the road we are presented with, first their old beliefs and system being examined and discarded (though in truth Guevara’s girlfriend discards him first) and new ones replacing them (most especially as they the Andes and then Peru). By the movie’s end, the two are, by their own admission, changed, though they (or especially Guevara) are not yet sure as to how or why. Both Bernal and De la Serna have plenty of onscreen presence and they work well together. We are also shown plenty of great faces of indignious people in the movie, which is outstanding cinematically, but it would be a bit better if the two were not so clearly being presented as saviors to the masses. Guevara most of all is shown as saintly. For example although the young men talk about secducing women as they embark on their journey, Guevara is shown as always pulling back. The two arrive at a leper hospital and immedialty begin to take more personal care of the lepers than those who had been doing so for years. And so it goes. Finally one small quibble: for a movie that has taken great care to shoot on location and reproduce South America of the 50s, they completely missed the last shot, with a plane taking off from Caracas. We are shown a plain or perhaps a savannah, but in fact Caracas is a mountain valley. A small thing no doubt, but it left me wishing that they had gone the extra mile. ¡Time is not my master!