#The motorcycle diaries book movie

They are still two young students, middle-class, even naive, and although their journey changes them, it ends before the changes take hold.

#The motorcycle diaries book movie

Part of the problem may be that the movie takes place before Ernesto became Che, and Alberto (played by Rodrigo de la Serna) became a doctor who opened a medical school and clinic in Cuba (where he still lives). For two radical intellectuals with exciting futures ahead of them, they have limited conversational ability, and everything they say is generated by the plot, the conventions of the situation, or standard pieties and impieties. We understand that Ernesto and Alberto are friends, but that's about all we find out about them they develop none of the complexities of other on-the-road couples, like Thelma and Louise, Bonnie and Clyde or Huck and Jim. But seen simply as a film, 'The Motorcycle Diaries' is attenuated and tedious. They are mostly a matter of Political Correctness, I think it is uncool to be against Che Guevara. The movie is receiving devoutly favorable reviews. He is an awfully nice man in the movie, especially as played by the sweet and engaging Gael Garcia Bernal (from ' Y Tu Mama Tambien'). His legend lives on, celebrated largely, I am afraid, by people on the left who have sentimentalized him without looking too closely at his beliefs and methods. 'Something has changed in me.' The final titles say he would go on to join Castro in the Cuban Revolution, and then fight for his cause in the Congo and Bolivia, where he died. 'I think of things in different ways,' he tells his friend. Guevara stands in the stern and looks down at a shabby smaller boat that the steamer is towing: This is the boat carrying the poor people, who have no decks, deck-chairs, dining rooms, orchestras and staterooms, but must hang their hammocks where they can.Д«y the end of the journey, Ernesto has undergone a conversion. To get to the leper colony, they take a steamer down a vast lake. A farmer and his wife, who they meet on the road, and who were forced off their land by evil capitalists. They do meet some good new friends: A doctor in Lima, for example, who gets them an invitation to stay at a leper colony. And along the way the two travelers depend on the kindness of strangers they're basically broke, and while Ernesto believes in being honest with people, Alberto gets better results by conning them. The film, directed by Walter Salles (' Central Station'), follows them past transcendent scenery we see forests, plains, high chaparral, deserts, lakes, rivers, mountains, spectacular vistas. Chichina ( Mia Maestro) herself loves him, up to a point: 'Do you expect me to wait for you? Don't take forever.' Shy around girls and not much of a dancer, Ernesto is unable to say whether he does or not. From the alarming number of times their motorcycle turns over, skids out from under them, careens into a ditch or (in one case) broadsides a cow, it would appear neither has ever been on a motorcycle, either.ДЇirst stop, the farm of Ernesto's girlfriend, whose rich father disapproves of him. Guevara is a medical student with one year still to go, and Alberto is a biochemist. Cuba has turned out more or less as he would have wanted it to.Д«ut all of that is far in the future as Ernesto and Alberto mount their battered old 1939 motorcycle and roar off for a trip around a continent they'll be seeing for the first time. He said he loved the people but he did not love their freedom of speech, their freedom to dissent, or their civil liberties. Like his friend Fidel Castro, he was a right-winger disguised as a communist. Che Guevara makes a convenient folk hero for those who have not looked very closely into his actual philosophy, which was repressive and authoritarian.