THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES

Synopsis

In 1952, two young Argentines, Ernesto Guevara and Alberto Granado, set out on a road trip to discover the real Latin America. Ernesto is a 23-year-old medical student specializing in leprology, and Alberto, 29, is a biochemist. The film follows the young men as they unveil the rich and complex human and social topography of the Latin American continent.

With a highly romantic sense of adventure, the two friends leave their familiar surroundings in Buenos Aires on a rickety 1939 Norton 500. Although the bike breaks down in the course of their eight-month journey, they press onward, hitching rides along the way. As they begin to see a different Latin America in the people they meet on the road, the diverse geography they encounter begins to reflect their own shifting perspectives. They continue to the heights of Machu Picchu, where the majestic ruins and the extraordinary significance of the Inca heritage have a profound impact on the young men. As they arrive at a leper colony deep in the Peruvian Amazon, the two are beginning to question the value of progress as defined by economic systems that leave so many people beyond their reach. Their experiences at the colony awaken within them the men they will later become by defining the ethical and political journey they will take in their lives.

Q & A WITH DIRECTOR WALTER SALLES

What attracted you to this project?

The fact that The Motorcycle Diaries unveils a human and physical geography that pertains to Latin America and is, at the same time, an extraordinary coming of age, a story about two young men finding their own place in the world.
The Motorcycle Diaries can be seen as a rite of passage, a journey through a continent that would utterly define, on both an emotional and a political level, who these two young men would become.

Why was José Rivera chosen to write the screenplay and did you work closely with him?

Of all the writers I met for The Motorcycle Diaries, José was the one who had the most discerning vision of what this screenplay should be. What interested him was the humanization of such unique characters. This film is about eight months of these two young men’s lives -- eight crucial months in which they were confronted with a reality that departed completely from the one they were used to in urban Argentina, a reality that asked them to make choices in life and ultimately decide which path they were going to take. José understood this from the start.

Can you talk about the research you did to make this film?

Research took more than two years. José and I read all the biographies that had been written about Ernesto Guevara, including the one that was the most interesting to me, by the Mexican writer Paco Ignazio Taibo. I went to Cuba several times to meet with Alberto Granado, a young man of 82, and Ernesto Guevara’s family. The support of his widow, Aleida, and his children was very important for us to move forward. Finally, we retraced the motorcycle journey and scouted extensively throughout Argentina, Chile and Peru: journeying in Patagonia, crossing the Andes and the Atacama Desert, entering the Amazon Basin, ultimately reaching the San Pablo leper colony, near Iquitos, Peru.

What is the story of the film?

The Motorcycle Diaries is the story of two young men who leave on an adventurous journey throughout an unknown continent, and this journey of discovery becomes one of self-discovery as well. This is a film about the emotional and political elections we have to make in life. It’s also about friendship, about solidarity. Finally, it’s about finding one’s place in the world, one that is worth fighting for.

Do you see the film as a documentary?

The Motorcycle Diaries is a film inspired by events that happened in 1952 in the life of Ernesto Guevara and Alberto Granado. It is not, therefore, a documentary about that adventure. What it aims for is to retain the original spirit of the journey made on La Poderosa. Alberto and Ernesto’s trip was shaped by the encounters they had on the road, and I tried to keep this quality alive in the film. In places like Cuzco or Machu Picchu, for example, we encouraged the actors to mingle with the people they met on the road, as Alberto and Ernesto would have done fifty years ago. This purely improvisational material was then blended with the more structured screenplay by José Rivera.

How much impact do you think this trip had on Guevara’s later political career?

The Motorcycle Diaries is a film about Ernesto Guevara before he becomes “The Che.” This definition, by the way, is not mine and was given to me by his son, Camilo. On the other hand, Alberto told us many times how decisive this trip was for both of them and how much it helped to shape their future. You have to remember that this is the first time that they ventured throughout Latin America. They were confronted with the remains of the Incan culture and were exposed to theoretical works of such Latin American thinkers as Mariategui. Such extraordinary and diverse experiences certainly helped them rethink their understanding of the world that surrounded them.

Can you describe both Guevara and Alberto’s personalities at the time the film is based? What were their reasons for wanting to do this journey?

When The Motorcycle Diaries starts, Alberto is 29 and lives in Cordoba, Argentina. He’s working at a local hospital and is somewhat uncomfortable with the way the patients are treated there. He’s been dreaming about this journey throughout Latin America for years and absolutely wants to do it before turning 30. He’s got a younger brother, Tomas, whose best friend is . . . Ernesto Guevara, whom he’s going to invite to take the trip with him.
Ernesto is 23 when they leave Buenos Aires in January 1952. He comes from an upper middle class family, but his curiosity and interests go way beyond the limits of his class. He’s well read, and he has traveled throughout Argentina on a bicycle on which he installed a small engine. His asthma has been a constant concern from a very young age, but he has learned to fight it. He’s a medical student, and he’s not far from graduation when he opts to take the trip with Alberto.

Can you describe the different countries and locations you have been through. How faithful have you been in terms of using the original locations?

We filmed in more than thirty locations, in Argentina, Chile, Peru. We endured temperatures that were way below zero in the Andes, to more than 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) in the Amazon. We used the original locations that Ernesto and Alberto traveled through as much as we could. A large number of the more distant locations, in reality, have not been dramatically transformed by what we know as “progress.” And when we couldn’t use a location, we tried to find alternatives that would be very similar to the places that our friends cruised through on La Poderosa. The extensive research conducted by Carlos Conti, our production designer, was very important in this sense.

What have been the hardest moments of filming? And the highlights?

The most fascinating part of the journey for me was the one centered in the San Pablo leprosarium, in the middle of the Amazon. This is where Ernesto and Alberto spent more than three weeks of their journey and entered a reality that was drastically different from anything they found elsewhere. Several people who played lepers in the film had been patients at the actual leper colony, and this granted an additional gravity and density to our work. On the other hand, filming in the Amazon is extremely hard, due to the heat, the humidity, the impossibility of predicting the weather. You have to accept the fact that the nature surrounding you is much stronger than any human resources; you have to comply with and embrace what the filmic gods grant you every single day.