The Motorcycle Diaries: Like a Walk in the Woods, Who Really Knows What’s Ahead?
Written by Danlip (Kru’19)
“Dear mom, what do we leave behind when we cross each frontier? Each moment seems split in two; Melancholy for what is left behind and the excitement of entering a new land”
In 1951, two young, brave, and passionate souls decided to have a journey to, as how Ernesto put it, “Explore a continent we had only known from books”. From Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia and then finally to Venezuela, resulting in ±12,000 km in total. Those two souls are Ernesto Guevara de la Serna and his best friend Alberto Granado. Ernesto and Alberto, along with their own idealism, restlessness, and their sense of belonging to the open road, piloted a 1939 Norton 500 (they call it ‘La Poderosa’ or ‘The Mighty One’) to achieve their goal. La Poderosa, however, is an aged and leaky motorcycle, so they had to do some improvisations here and there throughout their journey to reach their destination.
In the movie, Ernesto (played by Gael García Bernal) is still a 23 years old aspiring medical doctor, only a semester away from graduating. His best friend, Alberto (played by Rodrigo de la Serna) is a 29 years old biochemist. Their final destination is to a leper colony in the Amazon, in which they will be volunteers. Despite their same objectives, field of expertise, and other similarities, these two characters have some notable differences that can be found throughout the screen time. Ernesto is a loyal, romantic, sentimental young adult with asthmatic lungs. He reads poetry books and loves to recite works from Neruda’s to a work of a poet which he couldn’t remember the name of. He also is a very loving person, he wrote letters to his mother to keep her updated with his current situations. Alberto on the other hand, is the more dominant one of the pair. He is the kind of guy who would gamble money just to have a one night off with a prostitute. He is the kind of guy who fulfills almost all of society’s stigma of masculinity (the scene near the ending where he hesitates to hug Ernesto goodbye further proves this all). Despite all that, he is a man with a very kind heart. The contrast of the pair’s personalities add more spices to the film. It’s interesting to see whenever they have disagreements over something only for them to make up brief moments later.
Walter Salles’ (the director) decision to use not only the name of the place, but also distance traveled as an indicator really helps the viewers who have no idea of how vast the land of Latin America is. It gives the viewer a deeper understanding of how much that the pair have traveled. It helps the viewer to imagine how much sweat that the pair have excreted along the journey and more importantly — of how much Ernesto (or the pair) has changed.
Yes, the pair changed as the story goes, and this is what I personally love about the movie. They gradually changed with the more distance that they traveled. The first half of the movie was mostly Ernesto & Alberto having fun, doing stupid things, being deceitful toward others for their own gain, et cetera, et cetera. When the pair arrived in Mina de Chuquicamata (KM 5122), the story gets a little more serious. It all started when Ernesto and Alberto met a couple who were in search of a job. They sit by the fire to have genuine conversations and it all escalated when the couple asked Ernesto and Alberto if they were also traveling to find a job, to which Ernesto replied “No, we travel just to travel”. Coming from an upper middle class family, Ernesto doesn’t really know what it feels like to have financial instability. He’s just a young man who wants to get on a bike with his best friend to travel to see the world. Right after he answered the couple’s question, he felt sympathy. When the scene cuts to the morning after, the fire that warms them at night is already dimmed. But before the fire had gone, it already lit something in Ernesto. From now on, he’s more aware of the problems that exist around him. The injustice, the inequality, and the suffering of the indigenous people who are natives but have no home on their own land. He has traveled 5122 kilometers and he is now starting to get mad.
What I also want to highlight from this movie is the cinematography work by Eric Gautier. It’s exceptionally beautiful. Most Hollywood films that I have watched always overuse a yellow filter when it comes to show the surroundings of Latin America. In The Motorcycle Diaries (which is not a hollywood film), there was no overuse of yellow tint. The result? Indescribably breathtaking. Starting from the cities, the desert, the green surroundings, the flowing rivers, and the most worth mentioning of all — the landscape of Machu Picchu. The scenes in Machu Picchu felt so intimate to me. Starting from the clouds, the natives, and the best friend observing the surroundings. The cinematic experience was enhanced when Ernesto recites an excerpt from a poem:
“…How is it possible to feel nostalgia
for a world I never knew?
How can a civilization that built this
be destroyed to build this…?
Tell death to go to hell.”
Of course, the experience didn’t stop there. When Ernesto is almost finished reciting the poem, the picture switched from the beauty of Machu Picchu to an urban place in Lima, Peru, which looks like this:
In the boat scenes, there is something that makes me fall in love deeper with this movie. I really want to applaud the movie for showing footage of common people in a black and white filter. It helps us delve deeper into Ernesto’s mind, because it shows the viewer that ever since the brief encounter with the couple in Mina de Chuquicamata, something really big has changed in Ernesto. Now, the life of the commons is all that he thinks about.
What’s smarter is, not long after the footage of the commons and indigenous, Ernesto is starting to have an asthma attack. The scene was so intense that I think Gael García Bernal deserves awards for this scene alone. It is smart because it symbolizes that not only Ernesto is mad because of the social injustice that exists around him, he is sick of this too, and he demands change.
Scenes in San Pablo Leper Colony (KM 10223) focuses on showing the viewers of how much Ernesto has changed. Starting from how he refused to wear gloves when encountering patients because it’s only symbolic (Because leprosy is not a really contagious disease), to how he insisted on crossing the wide river’s cold water by swimming at night to celebrate his birthday not only with the ‘healthy’ but also with the sick. Here, in San Pablo Leper Colony, Ernesto received the nickname ‘Che’.
Che said at the start of the movie that this story is about “Two lives running parallel for a while, with common aspirations and similar dreams”. There isn’t much politics in this movie, no need to worry about that part. Even Though I consider this movie is not just a typical road trip movie, you can just easily see this as one. This movie teaches us a lot about friendship, dreams, and how we have to enjoy our youth. Even Che’s uncle stated at the start of the movie that he envies Che for taking this trip and how he wishes he’s the one to experience it. You can see this movie as many things, but if I could summarize it, The Motorcycle Diaries is a movie about how a 9-months journey transformed Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, an aspiring doctor, to Che Guevara, an iconic Cuban revolutionary figure
When I finished watching this movie, three specific lines from ‘The Road Not Taken’, a poem by Robert Frost comes to mind:
“…Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
I have learned a lot by watching The Motorcycle Diaries; friendship, the desire to always go for the truth, about people, and many other things that I’m not able to elaborate here. We have no idea of the person we are going to become because of one small decision that we took in life, just like how Ernesto had no idea that he won’t be the same man that he was after he finished the trip. Life should be treated as an adventure and in the end — we are the one who decides if it’s already adventurous enough. But life is a mystery. Like a walk in the woods, who really knows what’s ahead?
