FREE ON CINEGEEK.De The Motocycle Diaries 

If Ernesto Guevara de la Serna hadn't later become the pop star "Che", who adorns countless T-shirts and I'm afraid even coffee cups etc, nobody would be interested in this trip from Argentina to Peru. It's one of the countless movies about young men who wake up sometime and then are "Che", Dalai_Lama or anyone else. For those who weren't too interested in Che Guevara, he is a folk hero. If you read his "Philosophy" in more detail, you will notice that he was also repressive and authoritarian. Just like his fellow fighter Fidel, I would assign him to the right spectrum and not to the "communists". Che claims he loves his people. Their freedom to express or write down their own opinions was never meant! In the end, Cuba became more or less what someone like "Che" dreamed it would be... In Walter Salle's film Ernesto and his friend Alberto are planning a road trip. Neither of them ever sat on a motorcycle, let alone ever left Argentina. First stop: Ernestos girlfriend Chichina (Mia Maestro), whose rich father doesn't agree with the guest. Chichina may love him - but she doesn't know for how long. Would she wait for him forever? The shy Ernesto still owes an answer. Walter Salles turns the trip into a wonderful picture film. Mountains, lakes, forests and deserts are crossed and the two travellers are always dependent on strangers. Both are basically broke. On their journey they make good friends like the doctor from Lima or the farmer and his wife, whom they meet on the road. The farmer, an expellee from his own land by the capitalists. Again and again Ernesto looks at the suffering of the poor and in the end he confesses to his friend that something has changed in him. In the credits we learn how he joined the Cuban Revolution, later fought and died in Bolivia and the Congo. Now his legendary status was allowed to develop, courted by the left. Salles occupies the almost inhumanly nice Ernestu with Gael Garcia Bernal, the woman's favourite, and thus donates another piece of the puzzle that serves the myth. His film lives on the political correctness that it is simply not appropriate to be against the "Che". However, the political is weakened in the movie and sometimes Salle's work even seems a bit tired. We understand that Ernesto and Alberto are friends, but beyond that both are not developed and we also don't get to know anything about them. Quite different from good road movies! Their dialogues are quite limited for the fact that they should later mature into radical intellectuals. Everything they say serves the plot. There is no deeper insight. Ernesto isn't the "Che" yet, but a student. Maybe the journey changes him, but we don't experience that. At least Salles lets the poor farmers and workers pose for the camera, like stills in black and white. We understand that here we see the memories of the "Che". Imagine Salles trying to tell us that the "Che" would have helped these people later. I'm afraid the opposite was the case: he just inflicted more suffering on them.