Review of The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) by Filipeneto — 12 Sep 2021

I decided to watch this film with some fear of finding just one piece of socialist or communist propaganda. For my happiness, the register and the emphasis are much more intimate, biographical and human than, properly speaking, political. In fact, if we didn't know the figure of Ernesto "Che" Guevara so well, and what he will come to be and represent, the film would not help us much to understand or know much more.

The film is the result of the cinematographic adaptation of two books by Ernesto Guevara ("Notes from Travel") and by Alberto Granado ("With Che across South America"), who are the protagonists of the film. It's a film told in the first person, and it tells us about the great trip on a motorbike that the two friends and medical colleagues decided to make throughout the various countries of South America that speak the Spanish language, and in which Guevara will feel like increasingly interested in helping and defending the poorest and weakest in society.

The script is much better than I expected and focuses on the trip made and how the same trip affects and changes the personalities of the two companions, particularly Guevara's. The friendship between both protagonists is solid enough to never be compromised by any obstacles or setbacks, and the tribulations they both go through can be really comical and give the film a lighter tone than expected. The film is not politically charged, and the effort to depoliticize it may have gone beyond what is necessary: in fact, the contact Guevara has with the poor and weakest in society is reduced to a set of innocuous testimonies that, I confess, seem superficial to me.

Skillfully directed by the Brazilian Walter Salles, the film features excellent performances by Gael Bernal and Rodrigo de la Serna, two Hispanic actors whom I naturally didn't know, but who I enjoyed watching work. Both are excellent when acting together and collaborate very fruitfully, with the first one trying to avoid losing his character's joviality at the expense of a premature social and political conscience, and the latter refusing to be just the playful friend of a more important character.

Technically, it's exquisite and full of details, starting immediately with an attentive and careful cinematography that knows how to make each scene visually immersive and beautiful without taking the focus from the essentials. The careful choice of filming locations contributes with an additional beauty, in a true tour of the most scenic places in Latin America. The entire setting, costumes and props are good and fit the chronology in which all the events take place. I did not observe major problems of anachrony or lack of historical rigor. The music is quite good, but it doesn't stand out particularly. Finally, a brief note of praise for the use of Castilian as a language, to the detriment of the commercially better option for the English language, which would eventually sell the film more easily but bring with it a sense of unpleasant artificiality.