Like Rubin Carter or Sigmund Freud or even the Velvet Underground, the icon of Che Guevara is more valuable than the man himself. For whatever evils the man committed, for spearheading the Cuban Missile Crisis and his execution of untried citizens and claiming that hate was an essential part of the revolution, Che will be remembered as the revolutionary of the people. Real Che wasn't the hero of the Cuban revolution that Castro was. Popular Che will forever look up and to his right, over a red background.
\The Motorcycle Diaries"" is a movie about the icon and not the person. And taken on those terms, it's a middling, uneven movie with flashes of brilliance. As much a travelogue as a profile of the man, The Motorcycle Diaries follows Gael Garc??a Bernal's young Ernesto Guevara riding around South America on a struggling motorcycle with his best friend. It takes place years before the Cuban revolution.
At its core, Motorcycle Diaries is a buddy comedy with 45 minutes of hastily assembled moralism added in. Much of the movie is a then medical school student Guevera and his biochemist sidekick Alberto (Rodrigo de la Serna) bumbling around a cinematically beautiful Latin America. Guevara stumbles at dancing and hits on girls in four different nations and crashes his motorcycle into every physical comedy staple the continent has to offer-mud puddles, snow and even cows.
Abruptly, Guevara and his best friend crash into the working class struggle, as well, when they set up camp with migrant workers for no other reason other than that the iconography demanded it. A deeper Che Guevara would have stumbled upon the plight of the common man and a heroic Che would have sought it out. Bernal does neither. The camera cuts to Alberto and Ernesto sitting across from oppressed miners. The subjugated poor literally appear in front of them.
Bernal, and Guevara himself, deserve more than director Walter Salles' Ernesto. He could have been written as a born fighter or a disillusioned college boy refocusing his life around people who needed his help. Instead, ""Motorcycle"" Guevara is little more than a two-dimensional nice guy, with few other thoughts or aspirations.
Like its titular motorcycle, the plot sputters and jerks as it incorporates every boon to Guevara it can throw his way. Much of ""The Motorcycle Diaries"" is flagrant cheerleading: The movie closes with Guevara swimming across a river no one had ever swam before to celebrate his birthday with lepers. And it's hard to take that seriously.
Bernal tries his best to salvage the film, projecting enough stoicism upon his largely empty character to save even a serviceable script. This wasn't written as a showcase of Bernal's talents, however, and de la Serna's lecherous Alberto often steals scenes written for Che to dominate, simply because Che is so dry.
Both Guevara the icon and Guevara the real man make for interesting stories, and Salles fails at telling either of them. What's left is a mediocre film, capitalizing on the public's love of someone they don't understand.
