The Motorcycle Diaries

The Motorcycle Diaries a 2004 film based on the books The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto Guevara and With Che Through Latin America by Alberto Granado. It chronicles the journey of a two friends who plan to learn about the continent around them, their discovery is deepened as the two question the progress society celebrates.

Directed by Walter Salles. Written by Ernesto Guevara and Alberto Granado.

Starring: Gael García Bernal, Rodrigo De la Serna, and Mía Maestro.

Let the world change you... and you can change the world

Ernesto 'Ché' Guevara

• [narration] This isn’t a tale of heroics, nor is it merely some kind of ‘cynical account’; it isn’t meant to be, at least. It’s simply two lives running parallel for a while, with common aspirations and similar dreams.

• [voiceover]
  We look like outlaws inspiring admiration everywhere we go. We’ve left civilization behind and we are much closer to the land.

• A revolution without guns? It would never work.

• The deeper we go into the Andes the more indigenous people we encounter, who are homeless in their own land. All across our own land.

• What we had in common - our restlessness, our impassioned spirits, and a love for the open road.

• How is it possible to feel nostalgia for a world I never knew?

• You gotta fight for every breath and tell death to go to hell.

• (To Alberto): Are you talking to the motorcycle again?

• What do we leave behind when we cross each frontier? Each moment seems split in two; melancholy for what was left behind and the excitement of entering a new land.

• Even though we are too insignificant to be spokesmen for such a noble cause, we believe, and this journey has only confirmed this belief, that the division of American into unstable and illusory nations is a complete fiction. We are one single mestizo race from Mexico to the Magellan Straits. And so, in an attempt to free ourselves from narrow minded provincialism, I propose a toast to Peru and to a united America.

• Wandering around our America has changed me more than I thought. I am not me any more. At least I'm not the same me I was.

• Me, I'm not the same me, at least not the same spiritual me.

Book

• "I knew that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two antagonistic halves, I will be with the people" ~ Ernesto 'Ché' Guevara

• "What do we leave behind when we cross each frontier? Each moment seems split in two; melancholy for what was left behind and the excitement of entering a new land" ~ Ernesto 'Ché' Guevara

• "All of them, all those who can’t adapt – you and I, for instance – will die cursing the power which they helped bring about with often enormous sacrifices. Revolution is impersonal, so it will take their lives and even use their memory as an example or as an instrument to control the young people coming after them…you will die with your fist clenched and your jaw tense, the perfect manifestation of hatred and struggle, because you aren’t a symbol (some inanimate example), you are an authentic member of the society to be destroyed; the spirit of the beehive speaks through your mouth and moves through your actions. You are as useful as I am, but you don’t realize how useful your contribution is to the society that sacrifices you." ~ Ernesto 'Ché' Guevara

[Note]: Film is based on the books The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto Guevara and With Che Through Latin America by Alberto Granado.

Cast

Gael García Bernal - Ernesto 'Ché' Guevara de la Serna

Rodrigo De la Serna - Alberto Granado

Mía Maestro - Chichina Ferreyra

Mercedes Morán - Celia de la Serna