AS RED AS OUR HEARTS ARE...

NO NOSTALGIA HERE, BECAUSE THEY DID NOT KNOW THE WORLD

THEY LIVED IN TO FEEL SO…

MOVIE: THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES (2002)

DIRECTED BY: WALTER SALLERS

WRITTEN BY: ERNESTO ‘CHE’ GUEVARA

STARRING: GAEL GARCIA BERNAL, RODRIGO DE LA SERNA, JEAN PIERRE NOHER, MIA MAESTRO

RATING: ***** (GREAT MOVIE)

‘This is not a tale of heroic feats. It is just a story of two lives that ran parallel for some time, with the same thoughts, dreams and aspirations’ and even if I had the words wrong, I sure got the sense right and so has the legend Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara: This is certainly not the stories of two warriors. This is the tale of two people who ‘Travelled just for the sake of travelling’ and because they had to travel to reach the San Pablo lepers colony that was in Peru, while they start from Buenos Aires. A distance that totals to approximately 9000 kilometres. The Equipment: A leaky Norton 500 that tells us before-hand that it is going to stand as whole pnly for possibly a quarter of the journey (And it beats it by staying for nearly half the distance!). The pilots: Ernesto Guevara (Gael Garcia) and Alberto Granado (Rodrigo Serna). That’s a wrap then: That’s the end of the plot – A plot that has nothing else but their journey to the place. 9000 kilometres of bike-rides, walks, truck drives and even ferries. And the story ends at Caracas in Venezuela where Alberto and Ernesto separate, thanks to a job offer for the former there. A little above the expected distance, the duo had travelled 12000-odd kilometres totally and this is a true story and not a Jules Verne novel! That is the story Walter Sallers had in store for me, and that is what he would be having in store for you too.
But Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara has more than that to say…

A lot more that too: So much that could be the difference between life and death and not the tiny moment in between…

Every scholar, every person who has studied out of classrooms would agree that travel is the best form of education there can ever be: There can be no better way to study about life than to live it like you ought to. And that is what Guevara conveys, though he does that in his Argentine tongue and in more complex words, while I give it in a nutshell. This is the tale of the transition of Ernesto Guevara into what conclusively triggered the rise of the legendary Che in him: And this transition is so humungous that it could be associated with that of Joan when she decided that she needed to fight for her country more than survive, or that of Karl Marx, who sat down and thought that life had a lot more to offer than just women, or Teresa, who realized that the same could apply for her too, except that it is men. And this is also one of the vital transitions for humankind, and particularly for those who enjoy at least some luxury in present-day Latin America and also in the republic of Congo as this involved one man (ONE MAN!) who made it all possible…

Ernesto starts the travel with Alberto Granado with no haste to reach the place but to enjoy the ride that took them there. And bumpy and reckless though it maybe, punctuated by a couple of falls and cow-crashes (And maybe even a lot more!) neither Ernesto or Alberto have no real haste to get to the place except that Alberto wants to complete his journey on his 30^th birthday, that is on April 2^nd, 1953 at Caracas in Venezuela. They take a detour for Ernesto to present a German Sheperd to his girlfriend Chinchina (Maestro) and at this point of the story you seldom see Gael Garcia as Ernesto nor Rodrigo De La Serna as Alberto Granado, but as two young men, one skinny and the other chubby, set to quench their thirsts and look into rumours about women in different parts of the country. You even sillily expect romance to brew when Ernesto takes Chinchina for a drive in her car, but you are forgetting something all this time. One: This is Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara’s tale and not one of urban playboys. Two: You have forgotten, or you do not know, rather (For even Ernesto realizes this only after three-quarters of his journey) that life is pain. Before you can even think that Ernesto is going to kiss his girl, they pack up after a short party to go on with their journey with a single tear trickling out of Chinchina’s eyes as she says to her beloved: “I would wait for sure. But don’t take forever, Ernesto” that obviously sounds too good to be true (Which it isn’t of course!!!).

The young blood in them continues to dominate over their hearts even in Chile, where they get chased away because Ernesto was ‘hitting on’ a mechanic’s wife, and another stop at Peru where both are drawn to two daughters of a fireman. And at this point you realize that there has got to be an event: An occurance that has got to be so drastic that it can change one’s course of life. And Ernesto responds to your silent query by saying that life is not a blast to be changing ‘drastically’ every second, minute, hour, day or year, but life is a transition and this is when you start to see the visionary in Ernesto. Gael Garcia Bernal is as much a visionary himself, for he matches Che Guevara (Both ar incredibly handsome men) as much as twin brothers match themselves. Half the time he speaks to somebody, be it his fellow Alberto Granado or the old lady ‘who waited tables till yesterday, but is too sick to do so now’ or the young leper at San Pablo, Silvia. He does not look at things or gaze at them: He explores - He looks deep into whatever he sees and sometimes he disappears into his mind, seeing in black and white, events that haunted him so much. However long the transition maybe, the spark was a tete-e-tete with a mining couple in Chile, who say they are communists and they travel to look for a job. “What do you travel for”, asks the deeper of the two, the woman. “We travel, just to travel” replies Ernesto, sans the seriousness he gets later in the movie. “Bless you all! Bless your travels” says the lady and that for Ernesto is a strike with a hard stone, and the stone he returns, to strike back at a truck and its captain, who refuses to even take a look at those he rejected to employ in his mine. There’s the foundation stone for the Cuban revolution: Ernesto Guevara, who had always been seen before as a quiet, composed and yet truthful person, breaks free of his norms and comes out of the groove of the inexpressive person he had been, though he continues to be true to himself.

San Pablo is the final frontier, and the Lepers colony in it exposes the heart in Ernesto, well and proper. He is not a ‘Patch Adams’ or a Florence Nightingale. He is human and what he does is within human limits. He refuses to wear gloves to see the Lepers and he offers his hand to shake with an elderly patient, who himself is afraid to do so, lest he contaminates him. At the turn of Ernesto’s back, he mutters to a companion: “These two are real gents”. Ernesto condemns the lepers colony being divided by the Amazon into a sick zone and a heathy zone; he talks to lepers like a friend and he swims across the Amazon to ‘really celebrate’ his birthday, with all the patients he had befriended, and that despite he is Asthmatic. He hugs them all without the slightest trace of inhibition and although Alberto Granado goes on with his way with women, Ernesto stops and looks around and at all places, including the Incas and points at the lost cities and Lima in turn saying “This is what they turned, to this”. In the end, when the duo had succesfully reached Caracas at the end of July, Alberto mischievously tells Ernesto at the moment of his departure, that his birthday was not on April 2^nd but only in August and that he had lied to motivate him. And with that he asks Ernesto when he would come to work with him after graduating. “I don’t know” Ernesto replies, “There is so much to do, so much injustice everywhere. I really don’t know”. And whether that concerns his medical studies or the returning back one cannot tell as the movie ends at that, after a ride more emotional than their ride had been bumpy.

‘The Motorcycle Diaries’ is a path-breaker. One cannot possibly imagine that a journal could be adapted in so poignant a way as this had been done. And the visuals too: This one had an excellent panorama to back the brilliant photography and some good music too. But the experience outbeats the technical expertise as this movie is more of the heart and soul of ‘Che’ rather than the brains of Walter Sallers. This is not a documentary by the way: It is too emotional to be called one. Perhaps even too emotional with tears, laughter, hilarity, smiles, admiration and a roller-coaster ride of multiple bonds that it cannot even be mediocrised as a movie. It is something more: Something equivalent to the spirit of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, possibly. Or the spirit of the whole human race even, for it is a reminder to people who have forgotten totally that they are people too…