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Movie Review: The Motorcycle Diaries
By William Sternman
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The
Motorcycle Diaries
Starring Gael García Bernal and Rodrigo
de la Serna
Directed by Walter Salles
This
is not a typical road or buddy movie. For one thing, it takes place in
South America and everyone speaks Spanish or a native pre-Columbian language
(the white subtitles are almost always legible). For another, neither
of the protagonists looks like either Robert Redford (who is one of the
producers) or Paul Newman, although they do look like Rob Lowe (in his
West Wing days) and Kenneth Branagh. One of these compañeros
is a 29-year-old biochemist and the other a 24-year-old medical student
specializing in leprosy. The first is named Alberto Granado (played by
Rodrigo de la Serna). The other is Ernesto Guevara de la Serna (Gael
García Bernal). Needless to say, Ernesto is better known today
as Che.
José Rivera’s screenplay is based on Granado’s Traveling with Che Guevara and Che’s own The Motorcycle Diaries. Whether the source material or the screenplay is true to life is impossible to know. What is important here, as far as I’m concerned, is the dual journeys depicted in the movie: the physical one from Buenos Aires to Venezuela, and Ernesto’s inner journey of self-discovery. The two mirror each other too symmetrically to have actually happened just this way, but that doesn’t matter. Art doesn’t have to imitate life to be real.
The trip starts out as a lark -- the two best friends decide to ride their single motorcycle to Venezuela, where they will celebrate Granado’s 30th birthday. But as they roar through the striking South American countryside, their lighthearted middle-class spree turns somber as they see the hardscrabble existences of the mestizos -- poor, despised, jobless. One man has lost his job because he championed the rights of his fellow workers; he is a Communist.
The good-hearted Alberto is barely fazed by what he sees. He is more interested in getting drunk, making out and filling his growing paunch. The more thoughtful Ernesto is moved and troubled.
There are other differences between the two amigos. The extroverted Alberto is a schmoozer and a manipulator. Whenever their decrepit cycle breaks down and needs repair, he cons local mechanics into fixing it free. He also talks women into providing his buddy and himself with free food, wine and other youthful necessities. But his younger friend is shy and diffident and even refuses to dance because he feels he doesn’t do it well.
When an old man asks about the lump on his neck, Alberto assures him that it is just a harmless sebaceous cyst. But Ernesto cannot lie. Although Alberto insists that it will do the old man no good, the future Che feels compelled to tell him that the lump is a tumor. We begin to see here the makings of the hard-eye revolutionary who must cut through the pretty illusions to the uncomfortable bedrock truth.
Their major and longest stop before reaching their goal is a leper colony where both men volunteer their services. Although leprosy is not contagious, the white nuns who run the leprosarium insist that the entire staff wear rubber gloves when dealing with the mestizo patients. Alberto and Ernesto refuse. The lepers are at first taken aback by their gesture but later come to appreciate its humanity. When the nuns refuse to feed the young men because they haven’t gone to mass, the patients share their meals with them.
One of the things that distresses Ernesto but is taken for granted by everyone else, staff and patients alike, is that the leper colony is on one bank of the Amazon while the staff’s quarters are on the other. Risking his life, Ernesto, who is asthmatic, swims across the river to declare his solidarity with the lepers.
The two main actors embody their roles perfectly. De la Serna is extraordinarily likeable as the fun-loving Alberto, a perfect Falstaff to Bernal’s introspective Henry V. Their parting of the ways is more implicit than the dramatic, heartbreaking rupture between Sir John and his former jolly companion Prince Hal. De la Serna’s character barely changes, but Bernal’s Ernesto discovers himself and his mission during their seemingly frivolous road trip.
For this reason I wish that director Walter Salles’ almost perfect movie had concentrated more on Ernesto’s lonely “leap in the dark” (to quote Thomas Hobbes on his deathbed). It might not have been as much fun, but it would have been emotionally and psychologically far more rewarding. Still, don’t miss this excellent movie just because some old curmudgeon wants the moon as well as the stars.
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William Sternman's short stories have been published in England, Hungary, Pakistan, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, as well as the U.S. His book and movie reviews have appeared in Audience, Films in Review, Bestsellers, The Drummer, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Houston Chronicle, The Boston Herald, The St. Petersburg Times and www.movie-vault.com. He has been a volunteer tutor at the Center for Literacy since 1998. He received a fellowship grant in literature from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
© 2004 Me Three