This is not a heroic feat, but a story of a pair of friends sharing a time in their lives, breathing together and dreaming together.
I've seen the saying very early on that if a man is still watching Che Guevara at the age of thirty, he is a complete idealist. To explain it in a sentence by Liang Wendao, a big reason is that Che Guevara "died in a romantic ideal." Even in today's world, he has long since become an imaginary "sage" who represents freedom, a symbol of communism. His blood-colored romance spread around the world with the photograph of Che Guevara in a beret, and historians began to call him "Red Robin Hood," "Latin American Faust," "Resurrection of Prometheus," and so on.
Che Guevara
So it's hard not to be curious to see who Che Guevara really is, what kind of a character Che Guevara really is, and what kind of youth he had in his short life of more than thirty years. What happened to this young man named Che Guevara that made him so determined to devote himself to the liberation of Latin America.
From the Jungle Diary of South America to The Memoirs of the Revolutionary War in Cuba If we carefully consider the emergence of Che Guevara's ideas, there is no doubt that it was formed at the end of the Jungle Diary of South America. Thirty-seven years after Che Guevara's death, in 2004, the film Moto Diaries, based on Che Guevara's diary, was released.
In Che Guevara's diary he wrote:
The wandering journey above "capital America" changed me beyond my imagination.
Of all the Che Guevara films, The Motorcycle Diaries is undoubtedly the most successful, it deeply portrays the frankness between the words of "South American Jungle Diary", and it shows us an "ordinary" Che Guevara with a detailed and natural lens.
In the adventure of life, the two young people began to travel without hesitation.
The Motorcycle Diaries – Granado and Che Guevara
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > life is a journey, but this time we are observers</h1>
The Motorcycle Diaries is the most successful biographical film I've ever seen, not because it's profound, but because it's natural enough, in other words it's sincere enough to the audience.
For characters like Che Guevara, it is very easy for movies to fall into the quagmire of preaching; for subjects such as travel, movies are very easy to be criticized like a road movie. And "Motorcycle Diaries" has perfectly found a way to dissolve and balance.
Unlike a biographical film, which tends to be too obsessed with the real and forget about nature, Moto Diary is adapted on the basis of Che Guevara's diary, making this intermittent record a complete story, and its content is also fictional, but if this fiction is one of the accumulations of personality changes, why should we reject it? We're looking at a vivid and real person, not a boring video.
Che Guevara arrived in Chile, a turning point in their journey
"The Motorcycle Diaries" depicts a young Che Guevara, who, unlike other Che Guevara films, cannot escape the shadow of the "deified" Che Guevara, in this regard it is completely silent, it shows the vitality of Che Guevara, the gags between young people, the embarrassment and frustration of travel, in these respects he is no different from all young people, the only thing that should be mentioned is that he is on his way to travel at the age of twenty-three.
Winter in Chile, a journey to Che Guevara
So that's one of the reasons the film is lively and sincere enough. Everything seemed so natural throughout the journey, and at the end a hint to Che Guevara's future was so natural. And our films always lack this gradual nature and the appeal of thick and thin hair.
In this film, we're in the view of the observer, and that's one of the reasons I like this movie so much because so much of the footage is made in a documentary way, and if you don't know anything about the background of the film, you might think that a lot of the clips of this movie are a documentary. "The Motorcycle Diaries" seems to be filming the travels of two young people, and the people and things encountered during the trip sometimes make it difficult for you to think that this is a movie.
So many shots from The Motorcycle Diaries are so full of this nature that you won't feel repetitive in a lot of similar scenes, like Che Guevara, whose motorcycles they fall on again and again. This is life, limited repetition, limited falls, but it can't be single, because you will feel very naturally that every fall is an accumulation, and the "Motorcycle Diaries" lens does not exclude this daily life.
Two young people traveling, their motorcycle blowing dust
In the excavation of Che Guevara's personality, "The Motorcycle Diary" is not deliberate and pretentious, and it does not give Che Guevara a long shot in what should be a profound story, and sometimes the picture just appears che Guevara's look, but the camera does not stay for a long time. Let the picture tell a story, rather than deliberately creating a picture for the sake of profundity.
Granado says that the limits of humanity have been reached, when a homeless traveler walks by
This kind of documentary filming method does not seem to appear too much in the movie, but "Motorcycle Diaries" is just the opposite. Records are for documentary purposes, and documentaries often reflect a kind of ordinariness, and this ordinariness is profound. Because as a biographical film, nothing highlights the society of the time more than such a shot, and Che Guevara deserves to grow up in this reality.
Che Guevara listens to the villagers on the journey tell stories
It is in this narrative that you will naturally feel that it is gradual, and you will feel very real that Che Guevara should and should be like his future, because he has experienced life. In one of the last speeches in leprosy village, you will not feel sensational in the slightest, because their footprints have traveled all over the American continent, and his words are based on his footsteps.
< h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > Guevara can go great because he is honest enough</h1>
The two most successful points of "The Motorcycle Diaries" are the nature of the plot and the growth of Che Guevara.
It's hard to imagine Guevara, the revolutionary leader in a beret and a cigar in his hand, as a somewhat wooden, honest and overly blunt character in the movie. But after watching the movie you will believe that such a person deserves to be the che Guevara of the future.
In fact, the che Guevara shown in the diary of "Jungle south America" should be a person who is both lively and serious, which is not a contradiction, but the complexity of a person. But "The Motorcycle Diaries" very cleverly selected the serious chapters to complete the transformation of Che Guevara, and only such an arrangement can achieve this change in a short film time.
The duo hopes to open a clinic by the lake in Chile in the future
Che Guevara's character in the film is impressive, he is honest and in all kinds of situations and circumstances. There is a small episode when Granado spends the night with Che Guevara. The owner of the house heard that they were doctors and wanted them to help him see the lump on his neck. In front of the elderly man, Guevara insisted that it was a tumor, while Granado, in order to take care of the old man's emotions and successfully spend the night, deceived the old man that it was fat accumulation and that they should be able to help with treatment. Che Guevara said this, and the honesty embodied in this passage runs throughout the film:
"How can I help?" Using mountain flowers and weeds? Or rhetoric? ”
Honest Guevara
Behind this honesty is a kind of responsibility. It is only by portraying this responsibility that che Guevara is transformative, because what he sees and feels along the way makes him understand a greater responsibility. In Latin America at that time, perhaps Che Guevara obtained the desire of "thirty merits of dust and earth, eight thousand miles of clouds and moon".
It is also under the portrayal of this responsibility that you will find that at the beginning they are still looking at the scenery, and slowly they begin to recall the difficult people they have seen, and I do not know where the dividing line between these two parts is, this is the nature of the film.
Che Guevara and Granado who wrote a diary
So the film began to naturally appear as a finishing touch. They are the mining couples they met, the Indians who left... Finally completed the transformation of the Peruvian leprosy village. These finishing touches are all true records of "South American Jungle Diary", and the film finally ushered in its main theme.
In conversations with the mine couple, it may be that Che Guevara in the film begins to really get involved with the politics of the time. During the conversation, the mine couple mentioned friends who had come out with them to find work, saying they were buried in the sea. This is a very important point and background in the film, because if you don't understand this sentence, you may not be able to understand Che Guevara, who has a dignified expression by the fire, because during the Latin American dictatorship, people who disagree with the dictator will be taken to the plane and thrown into the Pacific, so this is a very heavy sentence. After listening to their stories, Che Guevara gave the mine woman a blanket on a cold night in Chile and gave the couple fifteen dollars that Guevara's girlfriend had left for him.
The couple meets on their way to the mine
The next thing they met was the Indians, which was one of my favorite scenes in the whole film, because these few minutes were completely documentary.
The Indians that Che Guevara encountered
They can't have their own houses on their own land, and by this point the film has completely begun to be serious, but you don't feel preachy or dull at all, because it's gradual. In The Jungle Diary of South America, Che Guevara says this:
The Indians no longer worked this barren land, and even the Spanish conquistadors did not come to grab the land every day for their livelihoods, but they were more keen to obtain the wealth at their fingertips by heroic deeds or simple greed.
In the film, the camera keeps telling the Indian, but we can fully feel Che Guevara's attitude at that time, which is what we mentioned above - the power of the picture, because of its documentary approach, it is sincere enough. Decades later, when the wandering Sanmao came to this land, she said this in "Walking Through Ten Thousand Rivers and Thousands of Mountains":
"In 1973 there was an agrarian revolution in the government here, and the Land inhabited by the Indians belonged to themselves, and they no longer did hard work for the big farms."
In 1967, during a guerrilla attack in Bolivia, Che Guevara was arrested and killed. This is the last word, press not table.
Che Guevara photographs Latin American workers in real time, on the way
Finally they came to the village of Leprosy, where Che Guevara really defined his ideals. Out of respect for lepers, he refused to wear symbolic gloves and shake hands with them, all because the previous honesty was now transformed into responsibility.
Shake hands with a leper
He played soccer with lepers, persuaded sick teenage girls to undergo surgery, and so on. This is where a conversation between Gravador and Guevara appears:
Gravado: "It's time to settle down rationally, find a stable job, a reliable woman, and become an old man with a big belly." ”
Che Guevara: "That's right, it's time for me to start our plan." ”
What is their plan? Is it a clinic by the River in Peru? Or is It Machu Picchu's joke of guerrillas? Che Guevara was a medical student, he was a simple young man who was willing to be honest with others.
At the ball prepared for him at the leprosy village for his twenty-four years old, he finally said a sentence that the whole film had to say:
"Although we are humble and cannot comment on national events, we believe that, especially after this journey, we are even more convinced that it is completely wrong to divide the Americas into vague and false countries, and that we are of the same mixed race, north of Mexico and south of the Strait of Magellan, so let us abandon these local notions and toast to Peru and to the unification of the Americas."
The outspoken Che Guevara
Afterwards, the twenty-four-year-old Guevara swam across the Amazon River, which divided lepers with doctors, and celebrated his birthday with his leprosy friends. It was a staunch Guevara, and the river symbolized his words of "division and boundaries," which are fully documented in the South American Jungle Diary, which won the applause and respect of a leprosy village in Peru decades ago.
At dawn, Che Guevara left with their rafts on, and at the age of twenty-four he was headed for the future.
The real Granado and leper in history, Guevara
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > concluding remarks</h1>
Regardless of the real Che Guevara in history, the Motorcycle Diaries successfully shows Che Guevara's youth journey. It was a youthful time, and while the film shows only one faceted, but not all, of the fact that Che Guevara was on the way, we should be tolerant because it happened.
It's talking about Che Guevara's one-sidedness, but it can do it entirely because it's realistic enough, and the documentary's approach makes too many of its shots full of detail and sincerity.
It was an ordinary journey for two people, but it was the beginning of their metamorphosis, they began to face injustice, they began to react.
At the end of the film, the elderly Granado recalls the former Che Guevara