At the beginning of 1952, 29-year-old Alberto Granado and 23-year-old Ernesto Guevara “Fuser” de la Serna set out on a planned Odyssey the length and breadth of Latin America, starting in their beloved Argentina and taking in Chile, Peru and Colombia before reaching their projected destination at the northernmost point of Venezuela. On this touching and romantic (in the Dumas sense of the word) journey, the twinkling-eyed biochemist and his young almost qualified doctor friend, the man who would be “Che”, set out to learn all about the America they lived with but failed to understand…

For The Motorcycle Diaries, director Walter Salles drew on two books, the journals of Granado and Guevara. Although the story is in a way the prequel to the mythology of the Cuban revolutionary and there is one main character, each man has a prominent role to play, and this is reflected in the excellent casting of Gael Garcia Bernal as Guevara and Rodrigo de la Serna as the owner of the motorcycle in question: a clapped-out 1939 Norton 500.

Bernal is perfect casting for Guevara, not only because he has tremendous presence and matinee-idol good looks, but because in those molten-chocolate peepers there’s a great sense of gravitas; he seems to reflect the weight of history. Interestingly, in the interview included on the DVD, Bernal highlights Guevara’s irreverence, and yet it is the extremely reverential, if aggressively youthful, performance that he delivers that makes the film. This is particularly true when contrasted with de la Serna’s vivacious, vibrant and sly characterisation. With Granado himself a regular presence on set, it becomes clear in the extras interviews that de la Serna has done an exceptional job, bringing all the heart and humour out of the man. The affectionate, loving banter between the friends is natural and at times extremely funny. Their spirited friendship is never cloying or sentimental, but honest and genuine, from daring each other to swim a cold lake to Granado tending to Guevara during one of his regular, terrifying asthma attacks.

A great deal of credit for the success of this very good film must therefore go to the script and scriptwriter, Jose Rivera; some of the immediacy and vibrancy of the words is probably lost in the English subtitles, but nevertheless the simplicity and emotional clarity of the film is never shaken. It also made me smirk and even laugh out loud a couple of times. Little exchanges made me smile ([indicating a church] “That belongs to Jesus Christ Inc.” “Are they still in business?”). Much of it is also extremely touching, from the staggeringly warm and natural exchanges with the patients on the San Pablo Leper Colony who are stunned that these young men treat them like people, and don’t wear gloves to touch them, to the painful process of Guevara leaving his young, virginal girlfriend behind (“What do you want?” “For you to be silent… let me look at you… I won’t see you for a long time.”).

Add to that solid supporting performances and a gentle, episodic pace, and you have the foundations for excellence. What more could you want?

Well, breathtaking cinematography for a start. Admittedly it doesn’t take much to make the Andes look spectacular, but the long, indulgent tracking shots of the gorgeous mountain roads in all weathers are incredible. Beautiful, fog-bound shots crossing the vast waterways are rendered hauntingly (reminiscent, bizarrely, to me of Lyra’s journey to the land of the dead in His Dark Materials). Machu Picchu is stunning, as ever, and the genuine hardships of travel on this both beguiling and inhospitable terrain are made very clear. Once The Mighty One (that being the motorcycle’s name) has given up the ghost, the pair continue on foot and hitching rides through incredibly harsh conditions. When all this is married to Salles’s fluid directorial style, it becomes almost more of a travelogue at times, although there’s no harm in this distraction. Salles alternates between lingering tracking shots and judicious if dizzying use of handheld docu-cam filming. This only serves to underscore the unshakeable feeling that this is less a film than a dramatisation, if not of Guevara’s life than at least of Guevara’s life as he saw it.

The final piece of the five-star puzzle is the cracking score, at turns beautiful, gutsy, lyrical and most importantly, complementary. The Oscar-winning song, “Al Otro Lado del Rio”, which accompanies the film is also not only gorgeous but groundbreaking, being the first Spanish-language song to win an Academy Award (and allowing a little of the adolescent fighting spirit to show in Bernal himself when he boycotted the Oscars on hearing that performance duties had been handed not the original musician Jorge Drexler but to Carlos Santana and Antonio Banderas whom, it must be said, did a passionate but somehow substandard job). The DVD was given to me as a birthday present, I believe the OST will be going on the Christmas list.

So is there anything NOT perfect about this film? Well, despite its claims to be showing the roots of Guevara’s thinking rather than proclaiming the man he would become, the film can be a little heavy-handed in its social commentary. I won’t comment on Guevara’s politics; other than the fact I’m woefully uninformed, it’s just not relevant to an opinion on the film. But although the increasing learning experience of his travels sinks into Guevara in the most aesthetic way (black and white snapshot flashbacks), sometimes his speech-making and grand gestures can get a little wearying. Having said that, the defining moment of the final act, where on his 24th birthday Guevara makes a stunning and dangerous gesture in a bid to show which side of the socio-political divide he chooses to make his own, is a wonderful moment, and completely devoid of any possible saccharine tinge.

The DVD itself (and here I refer to the Region 2 European release) is a goodly collection, including the usual scene selection and trailers and an uninformative but sweet 10-minute featurette and Behind The Scenes feature. More interesting are the short, slightly bizarrely edited interviews with the cast and crew (more speeches than interviews as they are snippets, direct to camera, of responses to questions without the questions themselves) including Salles, Bernal, de la Serna, and executive producer Robert Redford. It’s telling that those directly involved in the process speak more of the characters, personalities and real people than the film-making process, whereas Redford cuts straight to the chase with a tale of film funding at Sundance. A short but sweet interview with the still-sprightly Alberto Granado tops off a generous package. If basically uninformative (it certainly didn’t tell me much I didn’t already know), it’s a likeable and goodly selection of stuff, possibly the best of which are the two or three deleted scenes which are included.

Highly recommended, at 120 minutes this seems to fly by, and the UK 15 certificate is indicative mainly of strong language and odd muted sexual reference.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older