September 16, 2004
By Matt Savelloni
“SILENCE IS ARGUMENT CARRIED OUT BY OTHER MEANS.” – Ernesto Che Guevara
THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES: A LATIN AMERICAN JOURNEY offers perhaps the most unique perspective on early political life ever scribed. Unlike most memoirs crafted in older, more narrow-minded years, Che Guevara wrote about his travails through Latin American with his best pal Alberto Granada when he was just a young medical student. As a lens into the young Che’s life, THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES might just have been another “road” book, however, with the hindsight of who and what its author became, it invokes a portentous moment in a revolutionary’s life.
In the early 1950s, Che Guevara was a middle-class lad looking for fun. For many restless young men, a simple change of scene often offers a bounty of opportunity to experiment without the filter of parents, teachers and local leaders. So much of our early years are spent as automatons waiting for programming and indoctrination, it’s no wonder that as certain young minds grow, they naturally veer towards rebellion. Youth should be about seeking what is lacking from one’s life. This is essentially the early story of Che Guevara. The world he encounters, however, is far more complex than a simple buffet of pleasures waiting to be sampled.
The most striking aspect of THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES is its frank depiction of shallow desires. Che and his friend swindle their way into as much food, booze and shelter as their scheming tactics will allow. They are not thieves, simply hustlers, and the people they most often hoodwink are middle to low-class workers in landscapes of varying economic depressions. Still, they find small moments of joy in these lands, mirth culled from the simplicity of life. But there is also poverty, corruption, bureaucratic harshness and exploitation. Che moves through this previously unknown world seeking fun but – if not aching over – at least acknowledging the social injustice of these realms.
“SHOOT, COWARD, YOU'RE ONLY GOING TO KILL A MAN.” – Ernesto Che Guevara
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Reading THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES gives one the sense of traveling through time. Readers bear witness to the inner thoughts and moments of a newborn revolutionary. Despite what one might think about Che’s politics and the eventual movement he inspired, this diary is a frank exposé written during the exact moments when seemingly trivial events transformed a wealthy physician into a world-renown activist. Even if the prose is somewhat juvenile, the encounters often benign, blithe and trite, they are leavened with social impact by the appreciation of the compounding effects they will exert on Che’s life. It’s hard to imagine any other work covering a tender moment in any leader’s life with such openness. Biographies and memoirs are typically skewed – intentionally or otherwise – towards highlighting individual moments or filtering a timeline through the agenda of the subject’s platform or belief system. It’s hard to swallow many of these hallowed works no matter how tirelessly researched or slavishly devoted they are to the person being immortalized. However, sometimes you can infer more about a person’s character by the vacation they went on as a young man, what they had for breakfast and the adventures they undertook when the world wasn’t watching.
THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES is a meander, a languid walk through anonymous territories and people who would come to mean so much more. Che was an idealist but also someone who took no small pleasure from very human appetites. He allows himself to appear weak and underhanded as much as he does strong and righteous. This is the story of the man before he became a trademark for would-be reactionaries, before he became a cool dorm-room poster for fools who probably never read one of his words, before he became “Che!” In an age where whether or not a leader smoked pot as a college student actually matters in a political race, when judgments are cast on military service by people who never stood a post except maybe as teenagers parking cars at Daddy’s country club, it’s amazing to think that there once existed real men brazen enough to publish defining moments without rancor or bias. THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES may be little more than a travelogue, but because of its author’s eventual evolution, it undertakes the most daring adventure of all: the road to judgment.
“IF YOU TREMBLE INDIGNATION AT EVERY INJUSTICE THEN YOU ARE A COMRADE OF MINE.” – Ernesto Che Guevara
Sliding in with little fanfare other than being a film fest darling, THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES offers the world another chance to see one of our greatest working actors: Gael Garcia Bernal. This young actor is poised for international stardom and his role as Che Guevara should serve as another step in that direction. Over the past ten years, Central and South America filmmaking has exploded, launching the filmmaking careers of Robert Rodriguez, Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Alfonso and Carlos Cuaron, just to name a few. Bernal has appeared in most of the best offerings during this south-of-the-border Renaissance: AMORES PERROS, SIN NOTICIAS DE DIOS, THE CRIME OF FATHER AMARO, CUBA LIBRE and BAD EDUCATION. Bernal’s ability to slip into the skin of so many disparate characters will serve him well as a young physician entering the wild and reemerging newly baptized in social awareness.
The other name of note in THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES’ film embodiment is Walter Salles, another member of this new class of talented Mexican and Latin filmmakers. A jack-of-all-trades, Salles has served as writer, director, producer and editor on a run of excellent films like FOREIGN LAND, CENTRAL STATION, BEHIND THE SUN and CITY OF GOD. Although the story of Che Guevara may be an aged one, serious film fans should be thrilled that this new culture of virtuoso filmmakers are lending their talents to such a timeless tale.
“Whenever death may surprise us, let it be welcome if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear and another hand reaches out to take up our arms.” – Ernesto Che Guevara
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