Wellington Film Society: The Motorcycle Diaries

Walter Salles, USA, 2004.

Starring Gael García Bernal as the young Che Guevara, this is a love letter to Latin America – and to the wakening vocations of two privileged young men embracing, for the first time, the world outside their comfort zones. Charting the journey of Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado from Buenos Aires through Chile, Peru and finally to Venezuela, the film is as switched on as its protagonists by the sights and sounds of the journey.

“The Motorcycle Diaries is a beautifully wrought account of the dawning of the social conscience of one of the 20th century’s most romanticized revolutionaries. In gradual increments, Brazilian director Walter Salles’ best film to date reveals how an eight-month trip through South America in 1952 opened the eyes of a 23-year-old upper-middle-class Argentinian medical student named Ernesto Guevara, who a few years later emerged as the charismatic Che… This intelligently made picture is artful but not arty, political without being didactic.”
- Todd McCarthy, Variety.

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