460 - The Motorcycle Diaries, Argentina, 2003. Dir. Walter Salles.

Thursday, April 5, 2018

460 - The Motorcycle Diaries, Argentina, 2003.  Dir. Walter Salles.

Are you two Argentinian?
How'd you know?
Because of your accent.  Because Argentinians always say "che."
Had you noticed?
Not at all.

Ernesto de la Serna, 23, is a medical student, one term away from graduating.  He goes by the nickname El Fuser.  He plays rugby.  He aspires to help cure people of leprosy.  He himself has asthma.

Alberto Granado, his friend, is a biochemist, 29, about to turn thirty.  He also aspires to cure people of leprosy.  He owns a motorcycle, a 1939 Norton 500, battered and leaking.  He calls it, ironically, "La Poderosa."  "The Powerful."  Translated in the subtitles as "The Mighty One."

Don Quixote had Rocinante.  San Martin had his mule.  Alberto Granado has The Mighty One.

Which pees oil.

As a self-proclaimed Scientific Vagabond, he dreams of spending his thirtieth birthday on the road in South America.

On the road.

The Kerouac of Argentina.

A road film.  Coming-of-age.  Two young men who dream of adventure before beginning their lives of service to their communities.

"In this very instant, young Fuser and your servant here are embarking on a trip to the most remote places of the human spirit, where we will meet new lands, listen to new anthems, eat new fruits."

They will listen to new anthems, all right.  But that is yet to come.

Granado charts their course.

Begin in Buenos Aires.  Drive west to Patagonia.  Enter into Chile.  Go 8,000 kilometers north up the Andes to Machu Picchu.  Visit the San Pablo Leper Colony in the Peruvian Amazon.  End in Guajira Peninsula in Venezuela.  The tip of this grand continent.

"With bellies full of wine and tropical beauties.  Hopefully sisters."

They refer to this grand continent as America.  In the same way the people of the United States refer to our country as America, the people of South America, at least these people in this movie, refer to their continent as America.  That makes sense.

The epigraph starts them off.

"This is not the tale of heroic feats.  It is about two lives running parallel for awhile, with common aspirations and similar dreams."

And off they go.

Their family members hug them.  Say goodbye.  Ernesto's parents are concerned for his safety, as well as his postponing medical school a semester.  Granado assures them they will be fine.

They pull out into the street.

And nearly get run over by an oncoming bus.

As their families watch in horror.

Later Granado drives off the road into a muddy pond.  The motorcycle is under muddy water.  The young men are under muddy water.  Someone should play some Muddy Waters.

Got My Mojo Working.  Baby, Please Don't Go.  Rollin' Stone.  Rollin' and Tumblin'.  Can't Be Satisfied.  You Shook Me.  And of course, I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man.

You can see his influence on music to come just by looking at his titles.  But then, Muddy Waters has nothing to do with this movie.  Just muddy water.

They stand up looking like two mud statues by the side of the road.

They stop to see Ernesto's girlfriend Chichina.  She gives them some money to spend.  She asks Ernesto to let her know where his heart is.  If he expects her to wait forever.  Or if he intends to commit to her.  He does not answer.

The two will write each other through his journey on the road.  He sends letters from post offices where he is.  She sends letters to post offices where he will be.

The boys crash again later.  This time on the road itself.  Skinning their legs.  Bleeding from the knees.  It breaks down.  They push The Mighty One for miles in the hills.  They ride with it on a raft, a steamboat, and a stakebed truck with a cow in it.

Ernesto can see that the cow is going blind.  He is practicing his future craft.  The farmer says what difference does it make.  All the cow looks at is dung.

Ernesto and Granado enjoy each other's company.  Laugh and tease and taunt one another.  And argue.

They quote poetry and try to guess the poet.

The Spanish Federico Garcia Lorca or the Chilean Pablo Neruda?

The first one.  Garcia Lorca?  No.  Neruda.

Pablo Neruda.  Valparaiso, Chile.  Canto General.  VIII.

I love Valparaiso, how much you encompass,
and how much you irradiate, bride of the ocean.

The second one.  Garcia Lorca?  No.  Neruda?  No.  Who?  I don't remember.

I used to listen to bare feet splashing in the ship
And had a feeling of faces darkened by hunger
My heart was a pendulum between her and the street
I don't know with what strength
I freed myself from her eyes
to slip from her arms
She was left clouding with tears, her anguish
Behind the rain and the glass.

The answer is the Venezuelan Miguel Otero Silva.

The third one.

Burning light that blinds my dreams
Now hold on tight for what is coming for you.

Neruda?  No.  Granado.

Yes.  We can tell.

They hustle to get The Mighty One fixed.

They hustle for food.

They hustle girls.

They make amateur diagnoses to try to get food and shelter.  Ernesto tells a man he has a tumor.  Granado tells him he has a sebaceous cyst.  Ernesto says they cannot treat it.  The man should go to Buenos Aires to see a specialist.  Granado says they can treat it.  In exchange for food and shelter.

The man, upset, sends them away.

Granado scolds Ernesto.  Next time work with me.  I could have gotten us food and shelter.  Fuser insists he was right to be so blunt.  "It was the truth.  If he can't handle it, he can go to hell."

The beginnings of things to come.


There is definitely one great reason to make a movie like this.  So that the filmmakers can go on the road trip themselves!

The landscapes are beautiful.  The people they meet are beautiful.  Their experiences are fun and challenging and exhilarating and dangerous.

You will recognize Ernesto.  Fuser.  He is played by Gabriel Garcia Bernal.  We have been watching him all week.

Bernal played Octavio in Amores Perros (2000).

Bernal played Julio in Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001).

Now Bernal plays Ernesto de la Serna in The Motorcycle Diaries (2004).

He will go on to play Angel in Pedro Almodovar's Bad Education (2004); Santiago in Alejandro G. Inarritu's Babel (2006); Victor in Gary Winick's Letters to Juliet (2010), starring Amanda Seyfried; Oscar Peluchonneau in Pablo Larrain's film Neruda (2016); and the voice of Hector in a film you may have seen, the animated Coco (2017).  Along with many other films.  He is currently preparing to play Zorro in the action adventure Z to be directed by Alfonso Cuaron's son Jonas Cuaron.

About midway through the adventure, the film takes a turn.  Ernesto grows earnest.  He becomes self-important.  And self-righteous.

He has spent the entire trip hustling people for money, hustling women, lying to others, trying to sleep with another man's wife.  He is a rich young man going on a trip without money in order to see what he can get away with.

Yet when they arrive at a convent, he castigates the nuns for not giving him food.  They are feeding others.  Why will they not feed him?  They owe it to him.

Hmm.

Churches around the world have had a millennial-long challenge of helping the poor without weakening them.  To empower others without enabling them.  To teach others how to fish rather then only ever giving them a fish and keeping them lifelong helpless dependents.

In this case the nuns have enacted a policy whereby they motivate the community to come to Mass.  Feed your spirit and then feed your body.  Come to mass and then come dinner.  The nuns are here for life.  Committed.  In the community.  Working with the same people day after day, year after year.  Laying their lives down for them.

Granado and Ernesto are just passing through.  Passing judgment.

Rich kids who refuse to work and refuse to pay but demand free food and try to portray the nuns as some kind of hypocrites because of it.

Meanwhile, the same nuns will still be there, loving and helping and feeding the same people in the same neighborhood for years after these two young men long since have passed on.

By the end of the movie we know who Ernesto de la Serna is.  Ernesto Guevera de la Serna.  Who has the Argentinian accent that causes him to say "che."

Ernesto Guevera drops the nickname Fuser and adopts the nickname Che.

And becomes an international terrorist and mass murderer.  Who silences the free press.  Oversees firing squads killing thousands of innocent men, women, and children.  Sends people to Soviet-style prison camps.  And promotes oppression and tyranny.

We have been watching a movie based on the real diary of the real Che Guevera.

"Was our view too narrow, too biased, too hasty?  Were our conclusions too rigid?  Maybe.  Wandering around our America has changed me more than I thought.  I am not me anymore.  At least I am not the same me I was."

For sure.