Owl of Minerva
“I take to my grave only the sorrow of an unfinished song,” Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna writes to his parents, quoting his favorite, Nâzım Hikmet Ran, in one of the farewell letters written in 1956, four years after a trip across Latin America that changed him and altered the trajectory of a revolution.
The Motorcycle Diaries, documented by Guevara himself and later adapted into a documentary film released in 2004, is based on the iconic revolutionary’s journey across six Latin American nations: Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, and Panama.
In Buenos Aires, and a semester away from becoming a doctor with a speciality in leprosy, Ernesto, along with his friend Alberto Granado, set out on their journey aboard on “The Mighty One.”What is truly wonderful about the documentary, to be specific (apart from Gael García Bernal’s intense gaze) is something that is now a lost art in filmmaking: the cinematic philosophy of presenting a “silence before the storm”. From leaving behind a civilization to discovering the forgotten ones, among the ruins of Machu Picchu, Ernesto writes, “How is it possible to feel nostalgia for a world I never knew?” The film captures the quiet beauty of how travel and friendship change the life within us. From the grasslands of Argentina to the cold deserts of the Atacama, and from there to deeply human encounters within the Peruvian Amazon, the film depicts the melancholic and often clandestine dynamics of existence.
The transformation from a youthful biker and vivid diarist into a future revolutionary (and still a vivid diarist), what comes to the surface is an even more profound observer of humanity. It is so gradual, the changing atmosphere, that the audience themselves seem to transform over the passage of those two hours. “When we left the mine, we felt reality was changing, or were we the ones changing?” Personally, it felt like an antidote that alters one’s brain chemistry, changing the way of viewing the world beyond its colors and celebrations, transcending into ignored disparity. The injustice and poverty, yet the ability to find happiness amidst hardship, is what makes his observant journey feel one step closer to the enlightenment of a comrade.
One of the most profound choices the filmmakers made was refusing to portray him as an already hardened revolutionary in an instance. Instead, they focused on the process: the awakening, the music, the landscapes, the photographs, and the moment the plane takes off, leaving Alberto, already sensing what lay ahead, making audience feel a strange void, confused longingness, and unnoticed emptiness.
Che Guevara’s story remains hauntingly wonderful and the archives left behind are nothing but the testimony of his dedication towards a change. Leaving behind a life of comfort, he stepped into a world of injustice with ideals too strong to ignore and morals held impossibly high. In doing so, he became a song to be remembered. More than simply a leftist, a communist, or merely an artistic symbol decorating a T-shirt, he became a face of resistance against elitism, inequality, and past colonial destruction, forces that have long plagued the world, making his legacy destined to be remembered forever.
Comments
Post a Comment