REVIEWED - THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES: This factually based drama begins early in January 1952 when Ernesto Guevara de la Serna is a 23-year-old medical student specialising in leprosy. Leaving his well-to-do family behind in Buenos Aires, he takes off with his pharmacist friend, Alberto Grenado, on a 12,425-km journey through Argentina, Chile and Peru en route to Venezuela, writes Michael Dwyer.
The two young men travel as uneasy riders aboard a 13-year-old motorcycle inaptly named The Mighty One, and their journey, which lasts far longer than they had imagined, presents sexual prospects for the gregarious Grenado, while Guevara remains dutifully faithful to the middle-class girlfriend he left behind. Their encounters along the way are by turn comic, dangerous and eye-opening as they travel through extremes of climate - and of wealth and poverty.
In the venerable tradition of the road movie, this proves to be a journey of self-discovery for the idealistic young Guevera, as his social conscience is nagged and heightened by the experiences of people he meets along the way: dispossessed farmers, exploited mine workers, and the inhabitants of a leper colony.
Director Walter Salles showed his compassion for marginalised characters in his earlier Brazilian movies Central Station and Behind the Sun, both of which exhibited his distinctive visual style, and in the powerful slum drama City of God, which he co-produced.
Working from Guevara's own diaries of the journey, Salles eschews didacticism and preachiness as his film subtly observes the gradual formation of a socialist revolutionary in the making - years before he became known as Ché, joined up with Castro in Cuba and was murdered in Bolivia in 1967, becoming a poster boy for that turbulent period of world change.
One of world cinema's most versatile young actors, Gael García Bernal, impressively extends his range once again in his expressive, understated portrayal of Guevara.
"This isn't a tale of heroic feats," the film declares in a caption that opens and closes the story, but it is nonetheless highly effective and illuminating, drawing the viewer deeper and deeper into the unfolding episodic tale it tells with admirable command of narrative and visual style.
