Motorcycle Diaries Film Review
The Motorcycle Diaries is a biographic movie, released in 2004, recounts journey of Ernesto Guevara, who is well known as Che Guevara, the Cuban Marxist revolutionist. He started his journey in 1952, his young age of 23, which covered almost the entire Latin America. The journey molded a revolutionaryin 20th century. He was a medical student, during his journey. He became the inspiration and icon of socialists, especially youngsters. He was unaware of the pathetic condition of peasants in Latin America, before the journey. He was accompanied by his friend Alberto Granado an Argentine-Cuban, biochemist, writer, and scientist. Both of them discovers the injustice and unawareness among the ordinary people in the continent.
The movie is an adaptation of the book Guevara's travelogue The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto Guevara and Travelling with Che Guevara: The Making of a Revolutionary by Alberto Granado . Gael García Bernal played the role of Ernesto Guevara and Rodrigo de la Serna as Alberto Granado
It was a planned adventure trip under 5 months and they had intention to do services in leper colony of Peru. They started from Buenos Aires, in Granado's Norton 500 motorcycle which they named as La Poderosa meaning "The Mighty One". They travelled along Chile, across Atacama Desert, reached Venezuela through the Peruvian Amazon. The Machu Picchu in Peru inspired Ernesto a lot. And in Peru he discovered the lepers were forced to live across the river and normal people were not allowed to mingle with them freely. Ernesto openly refused to follow the rules of the lepor island and he argued with the caretakers of the island. In this Leper colony, he made his first political speech, during a birthday toast. He made this adventure inspite of his critical asthma conditions.
The film had a good response from both audience and critics. Latin America is captured well by the director Walter Salles. The movie is great experience and a must watch category.
Even though this may not be the complete set of events or may not be the actual events in sequence, the movie is an excellent one to watch. Specially the hear touching scenes where he meets the lepers and the mine worker who is sad without any money. Anyone will become more sympathetic towards the poor after watching this movie as it depicts how Che lost his lover and a comfortable lifestyle and his profession as a doctor. He could have lived a very comfortable life as a surgeon instead of leading a revolution for the poor and peasants.
