The Motorcycle Diaries- A Timeless Movie

We have seen the posters. Bearded, beret-bearing head, standing out on a Commie-red background, dreaming of a finer future, probably next to another hippie poster declaring, “Don’t Walk On The Grass — Smoke It!” in the dorm room of your college.
Pop culture has neutralized the image of revolutionaries in history, reducing them to icons considered too unrealistically idealistic to work in the modern world.

The film “The Motorcycle Diaries” directed by Walter Salles, is a controversial example in this genre observed from many angles. The film is based on a communist revolutionary terrorist Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara’s journal depicting his formative years, especially the 1952 expedition in South America, though, the memoirs of his traveling companion, Alberto Granado on a Norton 500.

This slightly fictionalized adventure dramatizes the journey which helped turn a restless young medical student into one of the 20th century’s most romantic revolutionary figures. The film is highly controversial due to its depiction of Guevara and the history of Cuba.

This movie can be highly debatable which ultimately would lead to no conclusion. However, this film is not about politics or propaganda. Rather, it is an intimate drama played out on a widescreen scale, with stunning South American scenery providing a beautiful backdrop without distracting from the story.

As the Story Goes, With only a year remaining before he gets his medical degree, 23-year-old Ernesto Guevara and his friend, 29-year-old biochemist-in-training Alberto Granado, decide it’s time to pack up and ride Alberto’s dilapidated 1939 Norton 500 motorbike, ironically nicknamed “La Poderosa,” or “The Mighty One” as they bid farewell to their families to hit the road.

Ernesto and Alberto go on a ride in the hope to discover a South America which lies outside their comfortable lives, the story continues showcasing their emotions, as they witness experience extreme poverty of its indigenous people instead of their perceived vision of the land, the story showcases how a perspective changes their lives forever.

It is a personal journey of a man who took a majestic route in a four-month, 8000 km trek through Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, and Miami, as he promised to buy his beautiful aristocratic girlfriend a bathing suit. That is if the unreliable and poorly balanced La Poderosa doesn’t kill them first, in his words.

Political and biographical baggage aside, it works as a great buddy movie — a rousing road trip you’ll enjoy even if you couldn’t give a state-subsidized toss about Socialist ideals or world poverty. Guevara is played by Gael Garcia Bernal, who makes the character as realistic as possible, prone to frowning and introspection.

His companion Granado is played by an amazing actor named Rodrigo de la Serna, who undercuts his friend’s intensity: “You know what your problem is? Your f*****g honesty!”. Granado’s beautifully subtle reactions to his friend’s changing behavior are more than enough to chart the emergence of the strong, deeply compassionate hero from the shell of a frail, lusterless youth. Both actors’ portrayal lives up to the Character description provided in the book.

The Movie is Well made, it makes you care about the situations and Characters, as the film moves ahead.
Guevara and Alberto Granado’s trek through Argentina, Chile, and Peru on the way to Venezuela — witnessing the human underclass, callous Capitalism, and the horrors of a leper colony — makes you want to care more, about the plight of the Third World.

The Motorcycle Diaries is about a time before compromise. It’s about a gloomy youth with hope, dreams, and a possibility of change.

Image Source: English: Ernesto Guevara (left) holding the handlebars of his 500cc single cylinder Norton motorcycle which he used at the start of his 1952 Motorcycle Diaries journey through South America.
Date 1952
Source Museo Che Guevara (Centro de Estudios Che Guevara en La Habana, Cuba)
Author Unknown author

Website: Wikimedia Commons