Diarios de Motocicleta
Diarios de Motocicleta (The Motorcycle Diaries), made by the great Brazilian director Walter Salles in 2004, with Robert Redford as executive producer. A movie following closely the travel notes of a young Argentinean who made in 1952, together with a friend, a long journey across Latin America. The intention was to make it on a motorbike, only old Poderosa was definitely torn out and passed away quickly. The journey went on anyway, as anyone can expect.
After watching the movie I found the book, The Motorcycle Diaries, and I read it at one shot. It’s full of freshness, of that sympathetic craziness that looks true only in your early twenties; it’s full of empathy for every new situation and new encounter. Nothing fake, nothing pompous. The young author of the diary would become after some years well known in the world at large; by that time he was just a young dreamy guy. His name was Ernesto Guevara.
In the leading role a great Mexican actor, Gael Garcia Bernal, very well seconded, in some kind of counterpoint, by Rodrigo De La Serna (who, by the way, is a second cousin of Guevara).
Das Kapital meets Easy Rider, wrote Times about Diarios de Motocicleta. I would rather disagree with this judgment. We all know that the young sympathetic guy from the movie will become Che one day, only he doesn’t know it: the tone is warm and slightly humorous. The future of the personage is only a very discreet allusion in the movie; it is true that the situations encountered on the journey rise questions and suggest roads to follow, and the scene at Machu Pichhu transmits in a forceful way the emotion of the hero, his sudden awareness of what the South American identity means; but the movie succeeds in avoiding to be a political lecture. It is the merit here of the director, Walter Salles; it is also the merit of Gael Garcia Bernal, who is maybe one of the most intelligent actors of his generation.
To understand the spirit of Diarios de Motocicleta I think we should compare it with another movie of Salles, Central do Brasil; a journey through a universe that is, like the heroes of the movie, in the making, open to any outcome, with a destiny not yet crystallized. And the empathy between the heroes and the universe they are traversing is total; both universe and heroes are fully open to each other.
A commentator found, I think, the most perfect tag for this movie:
Nuestra inquietud, nuestro espíritu soñador y el incansable amor por la ruta (Paler23)
jejejeje la cagada (granchapa24)
Me Encanto la manera en que el Muchachito dice Este viene a ser el Muro inca y el Otro el Muro de los Incapaces (que eran los Espanoles).. una broma.. que encierra gran verdad (Rittoshi)
Bom pra caralho ... (elvinoman)
Que linda Musica al final del film.. Tan Sudamericana y tan Latina a la vez (Rittoshi)
(Iberic and Iberic-American Cinema)
Labels: Gael Garcia Bernal, Walter Salles
posted by Pierre Radulescu at
4:11 PM
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