The Motorcycle Diaries
Walter Salles

Steve Bremner

The Motorcycle Diaries is the first of a crop of films dramatising different moments in the life of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara. It is based on an anthology of Guevara's letters, written whilst he was undertaking a youthful and laddish motorcycle journey around South America with his friend, the biochemist Alberto Granado.

Guevara's letters tell of how, during the journey, the middle class boy from Buenos Aries became conscious of the economic and social inequalities prevalent in the various nations of South America. The journey, which had begun as a quest for excitement, cheap alcohol and available women, became, according to Guevara, a formative experience in his life. Following the trip he was to reject life as a doctor, a career for which he had begun training, and was to embrace life as an ardent revolutionary. It is this transformative journey, that apparently had a central influence on the direction of his life, that director, Walter Salles, has attempted to bring to the big screen.

The film has been received very positively and, in some ways, it is not hard to see why, as the first half of the film is extremely entertaining. We are introduced to the young Guevara and Granado as they plan, and begin, their exploration of South America on the back of their Norton 500 motorcycle, nicknamed 'the Mighty One'. The journey is to take them from the southern tip of South America up through the continent to Venezuela. Guevara is motivated, in part, by the hope that he will discover the 'real' South America. Granado, on the other hand, just wants to have some fun.

As they set out the pair of adventurers' only problem seems to be their Norton motorcycle - a dilapidated heap of a machine that proves to be far from mighty. The Norton brings nothing but grief as it breaks down time after time. At this point you cannot help rooting for the two friends as they wrestle the unwieldy machine through breathtaking South American landscapes. As they get themselves in and out of various scrapes, with a mixture of cheek and charm, the audience's sympathy for the two protagonists only increases. The script is witty and sharp, particularly as the strains of the journey really begins to put their friendship to the test and the bitching and backbiting, that these kinds of situations encourage, begins.

So far, so Easy Rider. It is at this half-way stage, however, as the film tries to illustrate Guevara's awakening political consciousness, that it goes severely astray. The early stages of this process are handled reasonably effectively. Guevara begins to notice the poverty and exploitation all around him. As the pair travel into rural South America the poverty of the peasantry, the discrimination practised against the various indigenous ethnic groups and the working conditions of those employed in industry, become something that is inescapable, and increasingly begins to impact on the consciousness of the young Guevara.

Salles labours the point that Che is 'changing' by having Gael Garcia Bernal, who is clearly an excellent and charismatic actor, look a little bit moody, a little bit thoughtful and a little bit troubled. Che's brow becomes more furrowed, in fact, than the farmland of the average Bolivian peasant, and one cannot help but notice the symbolism of these moments. Visually illustrating the changing thought process of an individual is hard for any director - as Salles proves.

Where the film loses the plot entirely, however, is in the final third. At this point Salles appears to abandon any kind of objectivity and goes all out to present Che as nothing short than the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The pair reach a leper colony, deep in the Peruvian jungle, and begin to put their medical expertise to work. It appears that they work in the colony for months and Che earns the adoration and admiration of both the lepers and staff alike. He is presented as the saviour of the leper colony and single-handedly brings humanity and compassion to a place where previously despair has reigned.

As this long sequence comes to its conclusion it becomes apparent, in a scene that can only make one gasp in sheer disbelief, that the audience has been grossly misled. Salles places huge weight and significance on the experiences Che has in the colony and the viewer is left with the distinct impression that Che has laboured for months on behalf of others and has transformed their lives - the film actually becomes a kind of 'Dances with Lepers' at this point. In a scene that left this reviewer flabbergasted, however, it transpires that Che has actually spent a mere three weeks at the camp before leaving! At this point it becomes hard to imagine that, in the real world, anyone had really noticed he was ever actually there at all. We also learn that Che, he has risen, can never tell a fib. At this point the audience is clearly supposed to leave the auditorium thoroughly converted to the cult of Che.

This final sequence is, of course, more likely to appeal to the contemporary audience than scenes of Guevara ordering the execution of various members of the Cuban ruling class. Salles has clearly emphasised the elements of his life that continue to make him so marketable, even in the 21st century. The real Guevara had a romantic faith in the power of the peasantry, and also seems to have been more motivated by emotion than intellect. This makes him the perfect matinee idol for these apolitical times: political yet apolitical, passionate but a little vague, a politician yet one who ran from holding real power in Cuba.

Guevara has become a blank canvas for those who cannot find a political hero in the here and now. The Guevara unfortunately depicted by Salles eventually resembles nothing so much as an apolitical member of the royal family embarking on a 'meet the victims' publicity tour, but with added leather jacket and attitude. In one sequence, seemingly filmed to corner anti-globalisation, eco-tourist market, Che explicitly rejects the notion of progress altogether when he visits the ancient Inca city of Machu Picchu, which he celebrates and compares favourably with the industrial urbanised present. It is surprising that he does not get out a 'say no to Starbucks' placard and wave it around, just to emphasise the point.

The Motorcycle Diaries begins, therefore, as a dynamic and engaging film but is one that falters and becomes something akin to a mixture of Jesus Christ Superstar and Holby City, and clearly, therefore, cannot be recommended.