The revolutionary spirit lives on — at least for Walter Salles, whose Motorcycle Diaries, one of the hot tips for the Palme d’Or, was screened at the Cannes film festival on Wednesday.
The film is based on the diaries of Che Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado when, as young men in 1952, they undertook a journey on their not-so-trusty Norton 500 motorcycle around South America.
Starting from Buenos Aires, they travelled through Argentina, Chile and Peru, ending up at the San Pablo leper colony on the Amazon. Ché started the adventure a relatively callow young medical student, and ended up deeply politicised. More than 50 years later the director and cast of the film say that the same is true for them.
”The two diaries were written in 1952 but they still seemed to describe the Latin American of today,” said the Brazilian director on Wednesday. ”The problems of distribution of wealth are the same. The story seemed to belong to the present; it is far from a historical film. It meant that the project went ahead with a sense of urgency.
”This film should create a dialogue in South America. We always hoped that this film would trigger a reaction in the entire continent.”
Granado, who was involved in making the film, said on Wednesday: ”We were two young people who went out to discover the world. We found enormous differences between rich and poor, which we had read about in books but became much more obvious when we saw them with our own eyes.
”The journey represents my friendship with Ernesto [Ché] and the later Cuban revolution. It is part of me and my life — the journey has not finished for me. Whenever I see something unjust I remember all the injustice we encountered on that journey.”
The filmcrew followed the same route as Granado and Guevara, and the film involves several improvised sequences with local people. Gael GarcÃÂa Bernal, who plays Ché, said: ”They all shared our spirit and encouraged us in the telling of this story.”
Salles says it was a process that echoed Ché’s internal journey, culminating in a speech avowing Latin American unity at the leper colony on his 24th birthday in June 1952.
According to Salles, several of the non-actors who appear in the leper colony scenes had been there in 1952, ”one of whom immediately recognised Alberto [Granado]”.
Granado said: ”As I have seen the film more I have recognised myself more and more directly.
”And the more I see Gael GarcÃÂa Bernal the more I see Ernesto.” – Guardian Unlimited Â