Gael García Bernal and Rodrigo De La Serna star in Walter Salles adaptation of Che Guevara's journals written while travelling in South America in 1952
Uniquely, Ernesto 'Che' Guevara stands as an icon of both politics and pop, that ubiquitous headshot by Alberto Korda a symbol of dissent from Camden Town to Caracas. Indeed, so much mythical baggage surrounds Che-the-revolutionary that Ernesto-the-man has almost vanished.
Walter Salles' magnificent adaptation of Guevara's 'The Motorcycle Diaries', and his travelling companion Alberto Granado's memoir 'Travelling With Che Guevara', vividly humanizes the legend while honouring the life - or at least a version of it. Part road-movie, part rite of passage, this is a film that avoids noisy rabble-rousing in favour of a funny, subtle and poignant tribute to friendship and burgeoning idealism.
It begins in Buenos Aires in 1952 as 29-year-old biochemist Alberto Granado (De La Serna) and asthma-stricken 23-year-old medical student Ernesto Guevara De La Serna (Bernal) prepare to embark on a mammoth road trip through Latin America. The objective: girls, beer and self-discovery. The means: a 1939 Norton motorbike nicknamed, with some irony, 'The Mighty One'. "The method," says Ernesto, "improvisation."
Early scenes are full of the romance of the undertaking, Alberto good-naturedly conniving his way to a meal and a bed while Ernesto moons over Chichina (Maestro), the girl he's left behind. But by the time they reach Chile a new reality is emerging, far removed from the comparative luxury of middle-class Argentina. With the bike written off in an accident Ernesto and Alberto continue hitching until they enter the Atacama Desert. There they encounter a poverty-stricken, homeless couple, thrown off their land because they're Communists.
For Ernesto it's a pivotal moment, an introduction to inequality that offends his sense of justice. Salles responds by darkening the tone as Ernesto and Alberto begin to look into and beyond themselves. In Machu Picchu in Peru, then in Cuzco and Lima they meet whole communities disenfranchised by progress. Finally, at a leper colony on the Amazon, they find some practical use for their medical skills, but even here Ernesto refuses to recognise the division between the sick and the well.
Spectacularly shot on location in Argentina, Chile, Peru and Cuba, Salles vividly summons a Latin America that's simultaneously exotic and harsh. Bernal, so effective in Amores Perros and Y Tu Mamá También, finds in Ernesto quiet dignity and a growing sense of purpose, his graduation from awkward student to nascent revolutionary negotiated with charisma and conviction. Perpetually hungry and horny, Alberto stands as Ernesto's comic foil, yet tentative encounters between the pair and the people they meet on their travels - improvised by the actors in the spirit of the original trip - have the naturalness of documentary footage.
Unavoidably, Che's legacy hangs over the film and the final scene, in which Ernesto and Alberto say goodbye, is laced with poignancy: by 1959 Che would be fighting with Castro in Cuba; in 1967, aged 39, he was shot by the CIA in Bolivia. But the film succeeds because all this remains where it belongs - in the future. Instead Salles creates a stirring odyssey of self-discovery which, in its romantic conception of friendship and hope, and its freewheeling celebration of youth, is tender and unexpectedly uplifting.
Verdict A spectacularly realised road movie that offers an affective and affectionate portrait of young Che, and also a gloriously romantic coming of age tale set against a magnificently photographed Latin American backdrop.
Uniquely, Ernesto 'Che' Guevara stands as an icon of both politics and pop, that ubiquitous headshot by Alberto Korda a symbol of dissent from Camden Town to Caracas. Indeed, so much mythical baggage surrounds Che-the-revolutionary that Ernesto-the-man has almost vanished.
Walter Salles' magnificent adaptation of Guevara's 'The Motorcycle Diaries', and his travelling companion Alberto Granado's memoir 'Travelling With Che Guevara', vividly humanizes the legend while honouring the life - or at least a version of it. Part road-movie, part rite of passage, this is a film that avoids noisy rabble-rousing in favour of a funny, subtle and poignant tribute to friendship and burgeoning idealism.
It begins in Buenos Aires in 1952 as 29-year-old biochemist Alberto Granado (De La Serna) and asthma-stricken 23-year-old medical student Ernesto Guevara De La Serna (Bernal) prepare to embark on a mammoth road trip through Latin America. The objective: girls, beer and self-discovery. The means: a 1939 Norton motorbike nicknamed, with some irony, 'The Mighty One'. "The method," says Ernesto, "improvisation."
Early scenes are full of the romance of the undertaking, Alberto good-naturedly conniving his way to a meal and a bed while Ernesto moons over Chichina (Maestro), the girl he's left behind. But by the time they reach Chile a new reality is emerging, far removed from the comparative luxury of middle-class Argentina. With the bike written off in an accident Ernesto and Alberto continue hitching until they enter the Atacama Desert. There they encounter a poverty-stricken, homeless couple, thrown off their land because they're Communists.
For Ernesto it's a pivotal moment, an introduction to inequality that offends his sense of justice. Salles responds by darkening the tone as Ernesto and Alberto begin to look into and beyond themselves. In Machu Picchu in Peru, then in Cuzco and Lima they meet whole communities disenfranchised by progress. Finally, at a leper colony on the Amazon, they find some practical use for their medical skills, but even here Ernesto refuses to recognise the division between the sick and the well.
Spectacularly shot on location in Argentina, Chile, Peru and Cuba, Salles vividly summons a Latin America that's simultaneously exotic and harsh. Bernal, so effective in Amores Perros and Y Tu Mamá También, finds in Ernesto quiet dignity and a growing sense of purpose, his graduation from awkward student to nascent revolutionary negotiated with charisma and conviction. Perpetually hungry and horny, Alberto stands as Ernesto's comic foil, yet tentative encounters between the pair and the people they meet on their travels - improvised by the actors in the spirit of the original trip - have the naturalness of documentary footage.
Unavoidably, Che's legacy hangs over the film and the final scene, in which Ernesto and Alberto say goodbye, is laced with poignancy: by 1959 Che would be fighting with Castro in Cuba; in 1967, aged 39, he was shot by the CIA in Bolivia. But the film succeeds because all this remains where it belongs - in the future. Instead Salles creates a stirring odyssey of self-discovery which, in its romantic conception of friendship and hope, and its freewheeling celebration of youth, is tender and unexpectedly uplifting.
Verdict A spectacularly realised road movie that offers an affective and affectionate portrait of young Che, and also a gloriously romantic coming of age tale set against a magnificently photographed Latin American backdrop.