It is an irony of cultural history that the politically apathetic youth of today appear to have chosen Ernesto "Che" Guevara de la Serna - the only non-Cuban to participate in the three-year guerilla war which liberated Cuba from the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista - as their cult hero. The anti-capitalist, Argentinean idealist (who died in 1967) would no doubt be horrified if he knew how much revenue his image earns T-shirt and poster companies today. Does this mean that the makers of The Motorcycle Diaries should expect huge returns at the box office? Probably not; besides this being an arthouse Spanish-language film, Che Guevara's "iconic" image is an entirely empty, postmodernist signifier for these youngsters. In a self-referential loop reminiscent of the bizarre tourist attraction, the Most Photographed Barn in America, in Don DeLillo's novel White Noise, Guevara's image indicates nothing except the pure idea of cool itself.

The Motorcycle Diaries is an ambitious dramatization of an equally ambitious journey made by Guevara between 1951 and 1952. At the beginning of the film, we find fresh-faced medical student Guevara (Gael García Bernal) and his best friend Alberto (Rodrigo de la Serna) about to head off on a mammoth trip taking them from Buenos Aires, down the Atlantic coast of Argentina, across the Pampa, through the Andes into Chile, and from Chile northward to Peru and Colombia and finally to Caracas. Somewhat optimistically, they set-off in a 500cc Norton motorcycle. What begins as a prototypical student "gap" year (ahhh, so perhaps this is the unlikely reason why Guevara's image is so popular with college students) soon turns into a genuinely life-changing experience for the young Che, as he witnesses first-hand the political injustices suffered by South America's poor. Given that the film - at heart, a psychological road movie trying to shrug off any perceived pretensions - ends when the journey ends, the biggest challenge for director Walter Salles must surely have been deciding how much dramatic irony to include. The finished result, however, is masterful: a perfect balance is struck between portraying the young Che's cheeky, twenty-something exploits, whilst at the same time inscribing this character within the larger (hidden) canvas of the Guevara myth.

Wisely, Salles avoids focusing too much on Guevara at the expense of his traveling companion Alberto. In some ways, Alberto is a much more rounded and interesting character and Rodrigo de la Serna's deliciously pragmatic performance is one of the film's many delights. The other constant presence in a film which is otherwise almost always on the move is the continent of South America itself. The film takes its theme directly from Guevara's original diaries: towards the end of his trip, thanking some Peruvian hosts, the young medical student makes a speech claiming that his travels have taught him not to think of South America in terms of provinces and he therefore asks those around him to toast the idea of a united continent (according to his writings, Guevara really did make this speech). Yet all through the film, long before this point, I had in fact noticed how Salles was obviously at pains to portray this united continent. Thus, we have here the notion of a sublime object (in this instance, two: the continent of South America and common situation of the poor) in which the observer's gaze is already inscribed. Throughout, the film is "seeing" Che Guevara's entirely subjective version of a united South America, unburdened of divisive provincial differences and this also extends to the geography. Even when Guevara encounters a radical Otherness in the form of some sublime Incan ruins, he manages to relate this to the notion of a continent of peoples united by a common history.

The Motorcycle Diaries offers us a glimpse of who the real Che Guevara was, beyond the iconic image. Let's just hope that some of the kids wearing the merchandise will become interested enough to go along and find out.

                                                                 © THE FILM JOURNAL 2004