« Gantz Vol. 1 on DVD, 4/5/05 | Main | Alright, alright. I'm catching up. Promise. »
April 11, 2005
The Motorcycle Diaries on DVD, 4/9/05
This one is like the Odyssey in reverse. Instead of knowing heading home again, two characters set off to find themselves. This is a hagiography of Che Guevara who gets saintly as the movie progresses. At the beginning, he goes to visit his girlfriend on her family farm. She breaks up with him in a letter later. Soon, their motorcycle breaks down. He talks to the poor farmers, miners and laborers of Latin America until he finally gets to a leper colony in the Amazon where he becomes the doctor who breaks the rules and actually touches the patients. He's turned into Odysseus looking for advise among the dead or Marlow looking Kurtz. Perhaps the best analogy is Christ harrowing Hell. In any case, there's a lot of suffering in this movie and Gael Garcia Bernal does empathy very well. He's got sincerity down too, so his earthiness makes the preachy plot bearable.
And goddamn, who doesn't want to do Gael Garcia Bernal? No shirtless scenes though. Couldn't they have done just one? Sigh.
Posted by deaconmf at April 11, 2005 09:26 AM
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)