Motorcycle Diaries

I believe I wrote about this movie before. But it is so good, I just have to dedicate a whole post to it.

Motorcycle Diaries is a Spanish film made in 2004 by Walter Salles, starring Cael Garcia Bernal as Che (he is so cute!) and Rodrigo de la Serna as Alberto. It describes the journey Ernesto 'Che' Guevera undertook with his friend Alberto Granado in 1957. Che, as am sure everyone knows, was a Cuban revolutionary leader who has a cult following even today. This journey was the turning point in his life. He was a medical student who decided to take a year off and travel around Latin America, just for the fun of it. But this road trip turns serious when he sees the problems of people, their poverty and their destitution. This and a number of other events turn him into a revolutionary. The best thing is his ideology sprang from his real life experiences and not from the writing of anyone. For more on this amazing personality, you can check www.che-lives.com

Now about the movie. The entire film is an account of his travels from Argentina to Venezuela, first on a battered motorcycle and later on foot. The narrative is based on his diaries.
I am not an authority on cinema but I have seen plenty of films in my time! And I can confidently say that this is one of the best films I have ever seen. The cinematography is simply amazing. Every shot is like a picture postcard. The frames are lines of poetry in motion that flow like like the gentle river, now and then on stones and pebbles, now silent, now in a rush. See, I am writing poetry too! That is what the movie does to you.

The movie inspires you to just get up from you chair, sling a bag on your shoulders and just take off, even if it is just a day trip. I have always been a travel freak and this movie has just driven me to an extreme desire to travel- anywhere. I could go on about the movie but better still would be for you to watch it. And please do watch it and see if it does not change you at least a bit.

There are some great quotes in the film. Sample these:
"Let the world change you, and you can change the world." (This is the theme line.)
"...left behind civilisation to be closer to the Earth."
"When you cross a frontier, every moment seems split in two, melancholy at leaving something behind and excitement at what is ahead."
"We travel just to travel."
"How is it possible to feel nostalgia for a world I never knew?", asks Che at Machu Pichu in Peru.
"...you gotta fight for every breath and tell Death to go to hell."

Travel is..... I cant describe its wonder. Everyone must travel, whether to your backyard or to anywhere. It opens up your mind, gives you something to get by, makes an existence a life, inspires...
So travel, or atleast watch Motorcycle Diaries! See www.motorcyclediariesmovie.com It has some good links.