Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.
`Che’ Guevara died in 1967, executed by the Bolivian
authorities he was attempting to overthrow with a guerrilla squad. On the left
end of the political spectrum he’s become a romantic-hero figure, like a cross
between Davey Crockett and Nathan Hale. Even as Communist regimes collapsed the
1990s (Castro’s Cuba a major exception), Guevera remains a hero - maybe because
he perished before his memory could be associated with gulags, government
torture and boat-people refugees. And/or because he died leading the
foot-soldiers, not calling the shots from the safety of a distant fortress like
practically any other statesman.
In any case, THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES arrived on the level of
such before-they-were-famous Hollywood historic pieces as YOUNG MISTER LINCOLN with Henry Fonda, or
YOUNG TOM EDISON with Mickey Rooney. It stars some of the top Latin-American
actors and lists Robert Redford as the executive producer. Ernesto (Gael Garcia
Bernal) is a 23-year-old medical student from a privileged background in Buenos
Aries who joins pal Alberto (Rodrigo de la Serna) for a four-month,
self-guided tour of South America. Their
aim: celebrate Alberto’s 30th birthday and give Ernesto some time with his
girlfriend. They ride on Alberto’s treasured but unreliable 1939 motorbike. In
Chile the vehicle conks out for good, and Ernesto’s girlfriend breaks up with
him via letter.
The pair now hike overland, finding shelter and trying to
keep to their itinerary, which ends with a humanitarian visit to a leprosy
clinic related to their medical studies. Along the way are little incidents in which the pair witness injustice, usually
against the native Indians, the poor, or anyone opposing corporations, the
Catholic church (“Jesus Christ Incorporated”), or landowners. Fun-loving
Alberto, in fact, is more into scamming and chasing girls to be concerned with
social conditions. An epilogue explains, however, that his trip with the future
Che changed Alberto’s life forever, and THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES is based closely
on both his memoirs and the journal that Guevara kept.
This is a very subtle, realistic film - Marxism and the
United States are barely mentioned at all - rather than a propagandistic rant (AM talk-radio hosts could learn a trick or two...on the other hand, no, no they couldn't). Indeed, if
these were two fictional characters you’d think it was just a well-acted,
rather shapeless road-movie about friendship and Latin America in the 1950s. The
moviemakers certainly find Ernesto deeply admirable all along. Unlike
Alberto, Ernesto tells the truth even when it hurts, and shows innate
compassion for the downtrodden. And who could argue with that? Well, many
Americans who regard Che and his comrades as terrorists, for one. When it came out, critics of
THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES compared the Communists to the Nazis, and pointed out
there sure haven’t been any movies idolizing nice young guys who happened
to be Nazis – conveniently forgetting that actually, there were a few:
SEVEN YEARS IN TIBET, with Brad Pitt, and VALKYRIE, with Tom Cruise.
The adage “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom
fighter” really applies here, and it may or may not enhance one’s admiration
for THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES that I am given to understand, unless I’ve been
badly lied to by the right wingers (nawww, they do that? Really?) that during
the Cuban Missile Crisis the former medical student Che passionately wanted Castro to launch
all those Russian nuclear rockets at America, causing countless casualties in an
inconceivable atomic holocaust across the USA. Oh well, nobody’s perfect. Even
had that gone down, I still visualize girls (some with three eyes or likewise mutations) swooning in front of the Che shrines, posters, mugs and T-shirts festooning
the faculty lounges on American college campuses outside the thousand-year
fallout zones. (2 3/4 out of 4 stars)
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