idealism, friendship, fun - sun before the storm

The Motorcycle Diaries – Walter Salles

Friendship, self-awakening, and indignation at injustice, are at the heart of this empathic and deeply felt film. The real journey through fifties South America of Ernesto, later ‘Che’, Guevara and his friend Alberto Grenado is engaging, funny, moving and redolent of a rare sense of humanity.

The film conveys a feeling of foreboding about the asthmatic, vulnerable, unflinchingly honest Che: a sense of an innocent idealism at risk from the pragmatic selfishness of the ‘real’ world. Truly cinematic, it avoids didacticism and implies visually more than it says. We understand Guevara’s destiny without having to judge it. A must see.

(March 2005)

Filed under: 4 stars, Documentary, Drama, Europe/World cinema, General, Political, Walter Salles