Movies - The Motorcycle Diaries

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	Movies - The Motorcycle Diaries

The Motorcycle Diaries (Spanish title: Diarios de motocicleta) is a mostly biographical film about how young Ernesto "Che" Guevara de la Serna (Who later gained fame as a Marxist-revolutionary) and his friend Alberto Granado travelled across South America. Gael García Bernal acted as the young Ernesto Guevara and Rodrigo de la Serna as Alberto Granado.

The movie was directed by the Brazilian film-maker Walter Salles. The screenplay, written by acclaimed Puerto Rican playwright José Rivera, is based on Guevara's and Granado's journals (See The Motorcycle Diaries). The movie had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2004, and it opened worldwide later that year. The soundtrack for the film was produced by Leo Sidran.

The Motorcycle Diaries was nominated for four awards at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival; it won the François Chalais Award, a Prize of the Ecumenical Jury and a Technical Grand Prize. It was also nominated for two Oscar Awards in 2005 - Best Original Song and Best Adapted Script. It won the Best Original Song for "Al otro lado del río", written and performed by Jorge Drexler. This was the first time ever that a Spanish song received an honor in the Oscars.

Tagline: Let the world change you and you can change the world.

Storyline

In 1952, a year before Ernesto is due to complete his medical degree, he and his older friend Alberto, a biochemist, left Buenos Aires in order to travel throughout the South American continent seeking fun and adventures. Their objective was to reach Venezuela, passing by a leper colony in the Peruvian Amazon. The method of transport is Alberto's ancient and leaky but functional Norton 500 motorcycle christened La Poderosa (Literally meaning, "The Mighty One".).

The route they plan to take is a mighty feat. They travel through the Andes, along the coast of Chile, across the Atacama Desert and into the Peruvian Amazon and reach Venezuela just in time for Alberto's 30th birthday.

During the travel they come across the poverty and suffering of the lower classes of society while the rich live ignorantly in their high life-styles away from the problems. They meet a couple who had had their land taken away from them by the landowners. While in Peru, they volunteer for three weeks at the San Pablo leper colony. There, Guevara sees both physically and metaphorically the division of society between the people and the rulers (The staff live on the south side of a river, separated from the lepers living on the north).

These acquaintances with injustice change the way Guevara sees the world, obviously portraying the motivations behind his later political activities. Guevara makes his "final journey" one night when he chooses to swim across the river that separates the two societies and spends the night with the small leper shacks instead of the comfortable cabins of the doctors. This journey symbolizes Guevara's rejection of the wealth and aristocracy he was born into in Argentina and the path he would take later in his life fighting for what he believed was the dignity every human being deserves. This choice was also earlier reflected at a scene when "Che" and Alberto were content with sleeping over at a peasent farm after losing their tent instead of going to the ranches higher up at the hills.

In a journey that lasts more than a year, the partners travel over 12,000 kilometres, from Argentina through Chile, Peru, and Colombia to Venezuela. Key locations along the journey described in the film include: # Buenos Aires, Argentina # San Martin de los Andes, Argentina # Lago Frias, Patagoni, Argentina # Temuco, Chile # Los Angeles, Chile # Valparaiso, Chile # Atacama desert, Chile # Chuquicamata copper mines, Chile # Cuzco, Peru # Machu Picchu, Peru # Lima, Peru # The San Pablo Leper Colony in the Peruvian Amazon. # Cerca de Leticia, Colombia # Caracas, Venezuela

Reception and criticism

The great majority of film critics were positive in their assessment of the film. The New York Times critic A.O. Scott, for example, wrote that "in Mr. Salles's hands what might have been a schematic story of political awakening becomes a lyrical exploration of the sensations and perceptions from which a political understanding of the world emerges." American television critic Leonard Maltin called it "the best film of 2004": "The beauty of Walter Salles’ film is that we feel as if we are taking that journey, too. This is not a political film per.se; it’s about the maturing of a young man, and not about the revolutionary he became."--

Roger Ebert observed that for many critics, it was hard to separate their political sentiments from their reactions to the film. Some right-wing commentators such as Psychiatrist Anthony Daniels who said, "It is as if someone were to make a film about Adolf Hitler by portraying him as a vegetarian who loved animals and was against unemployment. This would be true, but ... rather beside the point." . From the other side, the Maoist left-wing commentary to the film was also critical of Che's politics, .

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