zio ugo Review of The Motorcycle Diaries

The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)

A bit Hollywoodish, but not too much

[13 December 2004]

The topic is interesting, the quintessential "road movie" with social and political undertones (or maybe the quintessential social and political film with road undertones) and, all in all, fairly well realized. The Latin American natural and human landscape is, as always, stunning in its beauty and variety. All in all a decent film. Yet, one can't help but comparing it with the film it could have been and it wasn't, mainly due to a certain Hollywood sappiness that, maybe under the influence of the American portion of the production, percolates through the whole film. Some defects are subtle and, all in all, venial: the way facial expressions are edited in here and there in the film, certain semi-comical moments whose placement and frequency are too predictable not to arouse the suspicion that they went directly from the pages of a production manual into the film, etc. Others are more evident: the river-crossing scene is absolutely unforgivable (and this whether Guevara really swam through the river or not), the political and social aspects of the film are downplayed and, when they are played at all, they are with a naiveté that borders with a populist "good feeling" (what the Italians used to call, some ten years ago, "il buonismo.") Gael Garcia Bernal is a solid actor, and this film confirms it, but we are far away from the performance in "El crime del Padre Amaro." One can even glimpse the early symptoms of Tarantinism (a disease that I named after Quentin Tarantino: a great director who is, however, so busy being Quentin Tarantino that his life seems not to have much space for anything else.)

But, as I said, all in all, the story is good, the film keeps moving, the South American landscape is beautiful, the Argentinian accent is deliciously musical. Not a masterpiece, but worth the price of the ticket, which is more than you can say for so many films.