Latino Narrative Film: the Motorcycle Diaries - Essay Example

The Number 11 May Latino Narrative Film The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) can hardly be d a movie in a sense modern audiences are used to. Covering the adventures of two friends crossing whole South America on motorcycle, this film is a real travelogue. Besides, it is based predominantly on the account found in the published memoir of one of two Latino travelers – Ernesto Che Guevara, whom Jean-Paul Sartre once called “the most complete man in history”, as well as the book of his travelling companion Alberto Granado entitled Travelling with Che Guevara (Brussat and Brussat, “Film Review”). My goal in this paper is to explore The Motorcycle Diaries in depth focusing on the way the spiritual transformation of Ernesto Che Guevara, the movie’s protagonist, evolves. Specifically, I will focus on how the film’s story is told and the devices that have been employed by the director to draw the audience. In particular, film’s script, performances, and the way it is shot will be discussed in relation to the research topic. Secondly, my goal is to compare The Motorcycle Diaries to another film by Salles Central Station (1998), which, similarly to the former, contains the theme of transformation. To achieve my goal, I have thematically divided the paper into four meaningful parts. The introduction sets the background to the essay. The first section focuses on the transformation experienced by the character of Ernesto Che Guevara and director’s devices employed to get the message across in a successful way. The second section will concentrate on the film Central Station and the similarities and differences between ways the two movies describe transformation. The paper ends with the conclusion of the major ideas discussed. In brief, The Motorcycle Diaries is a movie about a road trip taken by two young men who, while travelling, learn a serious lesson about life. A closer look at the movie’s focus allows claiming that it is not the result of the motorcycle journey that the movie’s director Walter Salles, a Brazilian by origin, emphasizes as the overall message on screen, but rather the transformation of the inner self of Che Guevara’s character. In particular, this is a transformation of a lighthearted medical student into a resolute leader. It happens against the backdrop of major social mishaps faced by people of the land that this weird duo encounters. This view can be well supported with the evidence from the film. First of all, it is clear at the beginning that the two young people who intend to cross the continent are politically unconcerned. Their major interest, it seems, is courtship and enjoying the company of as many women as possible. Indeed, in the first section the friends are shown in a quite lighthearted manner ­– just as they try to make use of their suggested status as doctors to obtain food and lodging and visit parties. Besides, one sees how the two repeatedly wreck their falling-to-pieces motorcycle, which they joyfully call La Poderosa or “The Mighty” (The Motorcycle Diaries). Just as the film approaches its ending, one sees a different character. Ernesto is no longer lighthearted, neither is he daffy or frivolous. Instead of acting in a playful manner, he now perceives life in a thoughtful and serious way. Clearly, Ernesto’s life has taken on a new direction. To illustrate, the movie ends with Ernesto’s crossing of the Amazon river with the aim to bid farewell to his downtrodden and outcast patients, with whom Ernesto now aligns himself. Thus, a young reckless student of the upper middle class Argentinian background has transformed in a radical revolutionary, who even after his death will have crowds of admirers kicking up the motto “Che lives” across the globe (Brussat and Brussat, “Film Review”). Just as any transformation suggests a process which results in a complete change, let us examine in detail how this process went on in Che Guevara (Alberto seems to have undergone transformation too, yet not in the same powerful way). First of all, at the beginning the audience is invited to get acquainted with Che Guevara as a representative of an upper-middle-class Argentinian society. His intended crossing the continent seems a mere adventure which he takes driven by the desire to escape from the mundane reality and see the world outside Buenos-Aires (The Motorcycle Diaries). The foreshadowing of serious changes that will take place in Che- Guevara’s mind and soul may be found at the film’s beginning when Che Guevara is portrayed with a focus his character traits. Specifically while trying to get a lodging Guevara finds that the man at whose place he wants to stay has a tumor. So Guevara advises him to go to the hospital at once. While his friend Alberto Granado makes an awkward attempt to hide the truth and says the problem is not that serious, Guevara remains not moved (The Motorcycle Diaries). Another example of Guevara’s capacity to be compassionate towards people in plight is his readiness to treat the woman who is dying. Granado is keen to spend time with the women they have met, but Guevara chooses to help the seriously ill person(The Motorcycle Diaries). These moments kind of predict that the adventurous and lightweight coloring of the two friends’ cycling trip will change to some a different one, foreshadowed by the first signs of affliction that Ernesto and Alberto encounter on their way. They are also illustrative of Che Guevara’s inability to have fun and enjoy himself while someone beside him is suffering. This pain for another person is stressed at the beginning and since those episodes it penetrates the Che Guevara character throughout the rest of the film. The transformation starts with the first encounters with peasants’ poverty and helpless condition. Walter Salles together with Jose Rivea, the film’s scriptwriter, manage to maintain the focus in such a way that it is clear that the further the two friends go, the more both of them change. The high note, with which the trip started, soon evaporates just as Che Guevara and Granado, a biochemist by profession, travel farther from their native country. Meeting lots of indigenous people, the friends discover how poor and oppressed they are (The Motorcycle Diaries). In the film, this is presented as an eye-opening of the companions. For example, Che Guevara is shown in such a way that the viewer easily guesses that watching the poor people’s conditions comes as a great shock for the young man. The 23 year-old would-be doctor comes from a wealthy and comfortable background, with a fiancee from a well-off family. He has been surrounded by decent life conditions throughout all his life. It is not difficult to assume that he has probably thought that people across the continent enjoy the same conditions of life, or at least are not as deprived as he has found them to be. So in his naivete, Ernesto is appalled, shocked, and upset. It is this bunch of new feelings that overwhelm Ernesto’s soul that cause him think deeply about the reasons of peasants’ deprivation. The feelings of outrage evoked by people’s powerlessness get stronger as Che Guevara observes that this problem affects all the countries he crosses. Just as he goes “De Buenos Aires hasta la Patagonia y despues a Chile. Luego al norte hasta los 6 mil metros por la columna vertebral de los Andes hasta Machu Picchu. De ahi, al leprosario de San Pablo en la zona peruana. Destino final, Venezuela...”1 (The Motorcycle Diaries). Che Guevara encounters more and more poverty, disease, hunger, and injustice both in peasants’ families and indigenous communities. One of the most important incidents in the journey is Granado and Che Guevara’s visit to Chuquicamata mines. After the two friends cross the desert, they move in the direction to the mines either hitching rides or simply walking. They meet one penniless couple who go in the same direction on their way to Chuquicamata. Just as travelers sit near the campfire beside the road, sharing mate drink and telling their life stories, Che Guevara, the would-be leader of the Cuban revolution, gets to know that the man has been persecuted by the police for his ideology as a communist. Having lost his land, the couple are forced to seek employment in dangerous mines. When the woman turns to the friends and asks them why they travel, Ernesto looks at Alberto and thoughtfully answers: “Viajamos por viajar.”2 (The Motorcycle Diaries). As Ernesto listens to the couple telling about their friends who have probably already been thrown to the bottom of the ocean after their odd disappearances, he has a series of haunting images crossing his mind. Che Guevara describes this profound effect on his mind and soul with the words, “Esa fue una de las noches mas frias de mi vida. Pero conocerlos me hizo sentir mas cerca de la especie humana, extrana, tan extrana para mi.”3 (The Motorcycle Diaries). With these thoughts on his mind, Che Guevara comes to the entrance to the camp of miners. It is here that he gets sick to death of how poor people are treated. A scene in this labor corner shows a foreman for the Anaconda Copper Company – a mining company owned by the United States – going around picking people that will be given work this day. The depressive mood is enhanced as one sees how the poor man is chosen for work, but his emaciated wife is not. In a slow manner, the man’s wife leaves and no one can say how long she will not see her husband. Ernesto’s indignation happens to come to the surface as he gets enraged at the situation when the miners are not provided with drink water despite the fact they will go underground. Che Guevara curses the company’s manager and hurls a rock just as the truck is moving away. Che Guevara describes what he feels with the words, “Al salir de las minas empezabamos a sentir que la realidad empezaba a cambiar, ?o eramos nosotros?” “...encontrabamos mas indigenas que ni siquiera tenian un techo en donde fueron sus propias tierras...”4 (The Motorcycle Diaries). The director and scriptwriter have obviously kept in mind the focal theme of transformation, subtle and at the same time discernible through the character’s words, feelings, and emotions. For instance, as both friends arrive at Macchu Picchu, they get stunned by the ancient civilization’s remnants. At the same time, they compare “un alto conocimiento en astronomia, medicina, matematica”5 that the Incans had and the level of their civilization to what was created by the invaders who “developed” Lima well-known for its poverty and deprivation (The Motorcycle Diaries). Overwhelmed with patriotism, Alberto suggests that a ballot box should be a way out of the plight. The response of Ernesto is immediate. It evidently reflects his already firm position on the issue: “?una revolucion sin tiro? Estas loco.”6 (The Motorcycle Diaries). It seems that it is here at the ancient civilization of Incas in Peru that Ernesto Che Guevara has a part of his inner self hardened. In my view, the transformation here unfolds to such an extent that Ernesto’s compassion, which we saw in the previous parts of the film, has grown into practical approach. Although I do not agree with Che Guevara on his practical methods of changing the society of the poor for better, it is clear that the mentioning of a gun was a result of Ernesto’s empathy towards the downtrodden population. The moment, I think, describes the fact that Che Guevara has already become firm on his position of changing life for better for his countrymen. Although his words, behavior and feelings are illustrative of a typical coming-of-age person, in a sense of a definitely romanticized vision of the world, the character of Ernesto is portrayed in the context of his transformation and growing maturity, both political and personal. Furthermore, when Che Guevara and his friend Alberto get to the leprosy camp, the former already aligns himself with the outcast patients rather than luxuriously settled medical staff. Ernesto and Alberto break the rules of the leprosy colony at Sao-Paolo by shaking hands with the sick people without wearing gloves (The Motorcycle Diaries). This is a kind of revolt against the rule of the nuns that ran the colony. To make the matters worse, the friends have a spirited session of drumming with the outcasts and play soccer with them. All this looks like a mini-revolution since being so close to the sick patients has been an unprecedented experience in the colony located on two banks of the Amazon river: the leprosy-sick patients on one bank, while the doctors and nurses on the other. Just as Ernepsto is thinking of this river at his lodging on the “healthy” bank, a philosophical thoughts run on his mind: “...el rio aleja a los enfermos de los sanos.”7 (The Motorcycle Diaries). It seems as if Ernesto was figuring out on which bank he will spend the rest of the life – that of the sick and the outcast, or that of the affluent and healthy. The powerful scene of Che Guevara’s birthday when he crosses the Amazon swimming just to join the sick and the downtrodden is a symbolic answer to this question. At the end of the film, Alberto and Ernesto part their ways – as they arrive in Venezuela. What Che Guevara wants to do, he is not sure about. However, struggling with injustice is what he hints at the end, saying that he does not really know what he is going to do next and adding “there’s so much injustice” (The Motorcycle Diaries). Analyzing the work of the director and scriptwriter one cannot but help stressing the fact that the transformation the audience sees on screen is achieved thanks to their joint effort to keep as close to the truth as was possible. This was done in two directions: first of all, by keeping to the original memoirs, and, secondly, by conveying the very spirit of the journey. Miguel Canero in his article on the movie “The Motorcycle Diaries: Getting to the Other Side of the River” observes that Bernal and de la Serna, the actors who played Ernesto and Alberto, were encouraged to go into the masses and mingle with the ordinary people the way their characters did back in 1952. This allowed shooting a range of non-scripted and profoundly realistic scenes. This incorporation of improvised material, shooting on-location, as well as a combination of both professional and non-professional acting staff helped to convey the film’s message as utterly realistic and made the whole picture believable. The director himself described his effort in the following way: the story is “…about youth, about the necessity of changing the world and believing that you can do so...it’s about idealism above anything else, and I think we live in an age where we tend to forget that idealism is necessary...the humanity, the appetite for life that was ingrained in this, in a very unfiltered, raw manner was tremendously attractive...” (Canero, The Motorcycle Diaries: Getting to the Other Side of the River). Indeed, his idealistic portrayal of a future revolutionary has come to be unbelievably realistic, as well as transformations within Ernesto’s inner self. Now I would like to compare the portrayal of transformation experience in The Motorcycle Diaries with a similar experience in Salles’s previous film Central Station that he directed in the same “cinema novo” style. First of all, one may find a range of similarities between the two films. They both contain journeys and they both focus on transformations. Specifically, it is during the journey that Dora, an ex-teacher at one of Rio’s schools grows humane. Having cynically deceived people at the central railway station in Rio, Dora earned money by writing letters to the relatives of the illiterate people, which she never posted (Central Station). Her cynicism turned out a tragedy when a small half-orphaned boy Josue appears to have lost his connection with his father due to Dora’s dishonesty and indifference. However, Dora develops her human traits as she brings Josue to a remote place in Northeast Brazil. Just as Ernesto, she spans the boundaries of her bourgeoisie consciousness, and finishes her journey changed and internally revived. The films, however, appear to be different in terms of their focus on action development. While Central Station’s character Dora grows and develops personally through external negotiation of her relationship that is social, emotional, and also cognitive, The Motorcycle Diaries is more static. The camera focuses only on what Ernesto and Alberto see without much content exploration. The audience clearly grasp that the friends’ sensibilities and personal viewpoints are hurt, but the transformation is subtle – it is rather sublime than cognized. In other words, we can only unveil the transformation as the motif of The Motorcycle Diaries through detailed analysis and rethinking of the episodes. To conclude, The Motorcycle Diaries offers an inspiring insight into the person’s ability to transform under dramatic impact of empathy towards afflicted people. Similarly, Central Station provides an optimistic view on personal growth under the influence of compassion and empathy. Despite differences in directing and plot, these two films reveal how a person can be transformed inadvertently as a result of a single journey. It also helps to restore the value of idealistic view of life and necessity to place spiritual/moral things above the practical ones. Works Cited Brussat, Frederick, and Mary Brussat. “The Motorcycle Diaries: Film Review”. N.d. Web. 11 May 2012. Canero, Miguel A. “The Motorcycle Diaries: Getting to the Other Side of the River”. Revolutionary Worker #1263, December 26, 2004. Web. 11 May 2012. Central Station. Dir. Walter Salles. Perf. Fernanda Montenegro, Matheus Nachtergaele, Marilia Pera, Vinicius de Oliveira, 1998. Film. The Motorcycle Diaries. Dir. Walter Salles. Perf. Gael Garcia Bernal, Rodrigo de la Serna. Film Four, BD Cine, 2004. Film. Read More