The Motorcycle Diaries
Short description
The Motorcycle Diaries follows Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, a 23-year-old medical student from Buenos Aires, and his older friend Alberto Granado, a biochemist, as they set out in 1952 to travel across South America on a worn-out Norton motorcycle they call La Poderosa. The journey begins as a youthful adventure, but as the two men move through Argentina, Chile, Peru and beyond, encounters with poverty and hardship change how they see the continent and themselves. The film is based on Guevara's journals of the trip and on Granado's recollections of the same journey.
Walter Salles directed the film, his third feature after Central Station and Behind the Sun, from a screenplay by José Rivera. Gael García Bernal plays Ernesto, with Rodrigo de la Serna as Alberto; Mercedes Morán, Mía Maestro and Jean Pierre Noher appear in supporting roles. The production was a multinational effort involving companies and funding from Argentina, Germany, the United Kingdom, Peru, the United States, France and Chile.
The film was released in 2004 and has an IMDb rating of 7.7 from around 109,000 votes, a TMDB rating of 7.4 from roughly 1,500 votes, and a critics' rating of 7.8 from 159 reviews. Its worldwide box office reached 58 million dollars. The audience scores sit slightly above the critics' average on one platform and slightly below on the other, indicating broad approval rather than a sharp divide.
What's left behind the scenes
- The basis for the film was Che Guevara's memoir "The Motorcycle Diaries", as well as notes from his friend Alberto Granado and materials obtained from his widow, Aleida March. The 80-year-old Alberto Granado himself appears in one of the final scenes of the film.
- The actor Rodrigo de la Serna, who played the role of Alberto Granado, is a distant relative of Che Guevara.
- When Ernesto and Alberto are in Temuco, Chile, and reading the local daily newspaper “El Diario Austral,” Alberto complains that his surname was misspelled. This newspaper is still published today and is the largest in Araucanía (an administrative region in Chile). During filming in Temuco, the newspaper published a report from the set and again, this time deliberately, made a mistake in Alberto’s surname.
- Two scenes that were not in the script were included in the film, meaning they were improvised. There was no scene in the script of Ernesto and Alberto riding in the snow, nor was there a scene in Cusco.
- In reality, Ernesto and Alberto had a motorcycle made by the British company Norton Motors Ltd. with a 500 cubic centimeter engine. Restored Norton motorcycles were used in the filming, and modified Suzuki motorcycles (nicknamed “Nortzuki”) were used in the crash scenes. According to the director, the old Nortons worked like clockwork, while the modern Suzukis constantly broke down.
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