espi

Over the weekend my wife and I caught Diarios de motocicleta (The Motorcycle Diaries) at my favorite movie theater. Filmed entirely this spanish, and dubbed in english, this is the story of Ernesto "Ché" Guevara (played by Gael García Bernal) and his friend Alberto Granado (Rodrigo De la Serna), as they travel from Buenos Aires to Peru on a 1939 Norton motorcycle.

The story, based on Ché Guevara's actual diaries, takes place when Ché is just 23, and in medical school in Argentina. With just one semester to go before becoming a full fledged doctor specializing in the treatment of leporsy, he decides to leave with his friend Granado, a biochemist, to explore the continent they know only from books. They plan to leave Argentina, travel over the Andes, and then up Chile until they get to a leper colony in Peru where they plan to volunteer until Granado's upcoming 30th birthday.

Once they get to Chile their motorcycle, which has been having problems the whole way, finally breaks down. They're forced to sell it for scrap and continue their journery on foot, hitching rides whenever possible. It's during their travels on foot that they meet up with the various people who begin to form Ché's political opinions.

Finally arriving in the leper colony in Peru, months behind schedule, Ché and Granado spend three weeks working with the lepers, doctors, and Catholic nuns who run the colony. The colony is divided by the Amazon river, with the staff and patients living on opposite banks. Ché, seeing this as a form of oppression, spends as much time as possible with the lepers, befriending them and showing them that thare just as valuable and special as the doctors and nuns living on the other side of the river. His empathy for the patients, and the movie, culminates with him swimming the river the night before his departure to be with them, leaving the elite to the be with the people, forshadowing Ché's future as a revolutionary.

If you go into the movie looking for a true biography about Ché the revolutionary, you'll probably be disapointed. Instead, the movie is a travelogue, depicting Ché's attempts to find his life's calling. He's still years away from invading Cuba with Castro, and nearly two decades from his eventual death at the hands of the Bolivian government and the CIA.

The film is beautifully shot on location in South America. From the desolate panoramas of the high Andes, to the beauty of Machu Picchu, to the hot stickiness of the Amazon river, the movie could nearly serve as a film for a tourism board. (I know I'm ready to hop the next plane to Chile to see Machu Picchu).

Gael García Bernal is excellent, and truly brings Ché to life on the screen. De la Serna is possibly even better, playing the occasion clown to Ché's seriousness; he brings comic relief to an otherwise serious film. I would hazard to say they're both Oscar worthy, but I can't imagine a foreign language film, and Sundance selection, would ever get such a nomination in the "mainstream" categories.

Even if you don't agree with Ché's philosophy, you should see the movie. It magnificently captures the beauty of South America in the 1950s, along with the desperation of it's people, their aspirations to make a better life for themselves, and the elements that shaped one the most popular leaders of the Cuban Revolution.

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If it weren't for my horse, I never would've spent that year in college.

Glory's Sun

what's this I see?? espi posting..much less starting a thread?? sorry pal had to say it

actually it sounds like a good movie. .. maybe I'll check it out one of these days..just maybe

espi

Isn't that one of the signs of the coming apocolypse? Actually, I've posted a few different movie reviews: here, here, and here. I'm even "tilted" now, so I can officially thumb my nose at rookies.

__________________
If it weren't for my horse, I never would've spent that year in college.

Glory's Sun

now now don't get too power crazy hehe. I don't come to this section often..after I posted I saw all the stuff you had been doing as well as in the sports forum.. made me proud Keep up the good work and the great reviews!