Movie: The Motorcycle Diaries

As I don’t have a television where I live, I usually just watch what I want, when I want. However, while being home for the weekend without bringing my computer, I had to survive with the television as company. It’s usually a hard task to find anything I haven’t yet seen, and this time was no exception. However, late at night while preparing to go to sleep, a great movie suddenly appeared; The Motorcycle Diaries. I watched it a couple of years ago, but just had to watch the rest before going to sleep.

Movie poster

The Motorcycle Diaries is a movie about the journey and written memoir of the 23-year-old Ernesto Guevara, who would years later become internationally known as the iconic Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. The film recounts the 1952 journey, initially by motorcycle, across South America by Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado. As the adventure centered around youthful hedonism unfolds, Guevara discovers himself transformed by his observations of the life of the impoverished indigenous peasantry. The road presents Ernesto Guevara and Alberto Granado a genuine picture of the Latin American identity. Through the characters they encounter on the road, Guevara and Granado learn the injustices the impoverished face and are exposed to people they would have never encountered in their hometown. The trip serves to expose a Latin American identity as well as explore the identity of one of its most memorable revolutionaries.

The lead role, playing Ernesto Guevara, is Gael García Bernal has starred in several good spanish-speaking movies, in addition to some Hollywood-productions [watch Babel and Mammoth].

One motorcycle, two men, an amazing journey.

In a journey that lasts for eight months, the partners travel over 14,000 kilometres, from Argentina through Chile, Peru, and Colombia to Venezuela. The fascinating thing is that they really didn’t just try to depict the different locations, they actually did the journey themselves, and filmed along the route.

For a good story, amazing landscapes and a captivationg story; this movie is absolutely worth seeing!