Review of The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) by Stephens. — 09 Sep 2005

Combine beautiful photography and powerful, natural acting with terrific writing, and you have Motorcycle Diaries. For those who criticize the movie as creating a false portrait of a man who would later advocate violent revolution, have they so little imagination that they are unable to comprehend how a young person who goes off to discover the world could legitimately grow from a sheltered son of privilege into a revolutionary, given the conditions of the world? One's politics are generally formed by your life experiences, and for most U.

S. citizens, their experience is standardized television/mall living, with few ever traveling out of their racial ghetto, much less out of the U.S. Whatever else a viewer might get from the film, would that it might be an interest in making his or her own journey of discovery--to places that no one in the family has ever visited.

Go for six months. See if you, like Ernesto/Che aren't changed. Things don't happen for no reason at all, my fellow citizens.