Reaction to Review of the film "The Motorcycle Diaries"

      My reaction to the review was a deeper understanding of the movie or clarification on my thoughts about it. The review explains what the movie captures, "What "The Motorcycle Diaries" captures, with startling clarity and delicacy, is the quickening of Ernesto's youthful idealism, and the gradual turning of his passionate, literary nature toward an as yet unspecified form of radical commitment" (Scott).The review speaks of an idealism that I also saw, which was a denial of the type of government the character Che encounters, the type of idealism was not specified. The best connection the review makes is to the world and is completely true, that "The love it chronicles is no less profound — and no less stirring to the senses — for taking place not between two people but between a person and a continent...In an age of mass tourism, it also unabashedly revives the venerable, romantic notion that travel can enlarge the soul, and even change the world"(Scott). The movie shows Che's nostalgia for the world and people he didn't even know, he bonded everywhere and demonstrated a unconditional love for the world and the people inside of it. What shocked me completely of the whole review was the following "Mr. Salles risks being accused of idealizing his subject. It's a fair charge, but one that misses the director's fidelity to his literary sources. Guevara's diaries, discovered in a knapsack long after his death, were published in 1993, and much of their appeal lies in the sense of immediacy they convey. Their author did not know who he would become, even as the notebooks themselves dramatize a crucial stage in his development" (Scott). It is very real that the Director Mr. Salles could of been idealizing Che, but I agree with Mr. Salles, Che was a inspirational figure and so was his story, so why not idealize him? Scott doesn't disagree either but suggests that they make him sound too good, even before he becomes huge in history. Well, that's fair but I didn't know before seeing the movie that he was a Cuban revolutionary and I still think Mr. Guevara is a hero for his experience and learning.


 Scott, A.O. "On the Road with Young Che." The New York Times. 24 Sept. 2004. 12 Jan. 2011 <http://movies.nytimes.com/2004/09/24/movies/24MOTO.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=the%20motorcycle%20diaries&st=cse>.