The Motorcycle Diaries [Diarios de motocicleta] **** (2004, Gael García Bernal, Rodrigo De la Serna, Mía Maestro) – Classic Movie Review 852

Director Walter Salles’s 2004 eye-catching and thought-provoking film unites him with Gael García Bernal, who had already played Che Guevara in Fidel, the 2002 TV movie about Castro.

As the young Che Guevara, an ideally cast Gael Garcîa Bernal revs up into top gear on his motorcycle with his student buddy Alberto Granado (Rodrigo De La Serna, also well cast) on a gorgeously scenic and adventurous life-changing trek across the South American continent in the early Fifties.

In 1952, Che Guevara was a 23-year-old medical student, who decides to postpone his last semester before graduation to accompany his 29-year-old biochemist friend Alberto Granado on his four-month, 8,000 km dream motorcycle trip throughout South America starting from their home in Buenos Aires

Initially a just fun-seeking sexual expedition, the journey for the duo becomes a coming-of-age experience as the two carefree middle-class men see the light and decide to get involved and help the people, after they encounter leprosy patients, and they eventually change into revolutionaries.

José Rivera’s involving, informative and intriguing screenplay is based on the first-hand accounts in the autobiographical books by the men in question, Notas de Viaje by Ernesto Che Guevara and Con el Che por America Latina by Alberto Granado.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Film Feview 852 derekwinnert.com

Bernal with Alberto Granado in 2004.

Walter Salles.