The Motorcycle Diaries (film)

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The Motorcycle Diaries
IMDB 7.9/10 (16,395 votes)
Directed by	Walter Salles
Produced by	Edgard Tenenbaum Michael Nozik Karen Tenkoff
Written by	José Rivera, based on Notas de viaje by Ernesto Guevara and Con el Che por America Latina by Alberto Granado
Starring	Gael García Bernal Rodrigo de la Serna Mía Maestro
Distributed by	Focus Features
Release date(s)	January 15, 2004 (première at Sundance) May 7, 2004 July 7, 2004 July 29, 2004 August 27, 2004 September 24, 2004 (theatrical release) October 28, 2004
Running time	127 min
Language	Spanish
IMDb profile

The Motorcycle Diaries (Spanish title: Diarios de motocicleta) is an Academy Award-winning biographical film about the young Ernesto "Che" Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado and their travels across South America in the 1950s. Guevara later became a famous Marxist revolutionary, and the film depicts the gradual development of his political outlook. However, his revolutionary exploits are not mentioned in the film except in some captions at the end.

The film was an international co-production between companies in Argentina, Chile, France, Germany, Peru, the United Kingdom and the United States. Ernesto Guevara is played by the Mexican actor Gael García Bernal and Alberto Granado by the Argentinian Rodrigo de la Serna. The film was directed by the Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles. The screenplay, written by acclaimed Puerto Rican playwright José Rivera, is based on Guevara's and Granado's journals (see The Motorcycle Diaries). The soundtrack was produced by Gustavo Santaolalla. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, 2004, and it opened worldwide later that year.

Tagline: Let the world change you and you can change the world.

1 Synopsis
2 Reception and criticism
3 Awards
4 DVD release date
5 Trivia
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

In 1952, a semester before Ernesto "Fuser" Guevera 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 adventures. Their objective is to spend time working at a leper colony in the Peruvian Amazon, and then travel on to Venezuela. Their 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 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.

In a journey that lasts eight months, the partners travel over 13,000 kilometres, from Argentina through Chile, Peru, and Colombia to Venezuela. Key locations along the journey described in the film include:

Buenos Aires, Argentina
Miramar, Buenos Aires, Argentina
San Martín de los Andes, Argentina
Lago Frías, Patagonia, Argentina
Temuco, Chile
Los Ángeles, Chile
Valparaíso, Chile
Atacama desert, Chile
Chuquicamata copper mines, Chile
Cuzco, Peru
Machu Picchu, Peru
Lima, Peru
The San Pablo Leper Colony in the Peruvian Amazon.
Leticia, Colombia
Caracas, Venezuela

Left to right: Alberto Granado and Ernesto Guevara.

During their travel, Guevara and Granado encounter the poverty and suffering of the lower classes of society while the rich live ignorantly in their high life-styles away from the problems. They meet a couple who have had their land taken away from them by the landowners, and the exploited workers of a mine. In Peru, they volunteer for three weeks at the San Pablo leper colony. There, Guevara sees both physically and metaphorically the division of society between the people and the rulers (the staff live on the south side of a river, separated from the lepers living on the north).

These encounters with injustice change the way Guevara sees the world, and by implication motivate his later political activities. Guevara makes his "final journey" one night when he chooses to swim across the river that separates the two societies of the leper colony and spends the night in a leper shack instead of in the cabins of the doctors. This journey implicitly symbolizes Guevara's rejection of the wealth and aristocracy into which he was born in Argentina and the path he would take later in his life fighting for what he believed was the dignity every human being deserves. This choice was also earlier reflected at a scene when Guevara and Alberto were content with sleeping over at a peasant farm after losing their tent instead of going to the ranches higher up at the hills.

[edit] Reception and criticism

The great majority of film critics were positive in their assessment of the film. The New York Times critic A.O. Scott, for example, 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." American television critic Leonard Maltin called it "the best film of 2004": "The beauty of Walter Salles’ film is that we feel as if we are taking that journey, too. This is not a political film per se; it’s about the maturing of a young man, and not about the revolutionary he became."--Source

Roger Ebert observed that for many right-wing critics, it was hard to separate their political sentiments from their reactions to the film. From the left, Paul Berman criticised the film as idealising Guevara, whom he called "...a totalitarian" who "achieved nothing but disaster"^[1]. There was also a Maoist left-wing commentary to the film which was critical of Che's politics; see A Maoist viewpoint.

The details portrayed in this film, such as the size of the vehicle, are considered "legendary" rather than accurate, as in all dramatized films, and subject to much debate. For instance, Marcelo Gioffré (Source) (English translation here) places the leper colony in Venezuela and cites fellow rebel Humberto Vázquez Viaña in stating that Guevara found relief from his asthma in the combat due to increased adrenaline.

[edit] Awards

The Motorcycle Diaries was nominated for four awards at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival; it won the François Chalais Award, a Prize of the Ecumenical Jury and a Technical Grand Prize. It was also nominated for two Oscar Awards in 2005 - Best Original Song and Best Adapted Script. It won the Best Original Song for "Al otro lado del río", written and performed by Jorge Drexler. This was the first time ever that a Spanish song received an honor in the Oscars.