Whether you’re on the left or the right or somewhere in the middle, set your politics aside. The Motorcycle Diaries is a great movie. And I don’t care if he is two feet tall, Gael Garcia Bernal is hot.

Young doctor Ernesto Guevara takes a motorcycle trip with his best friend across South America. He is not a tourist, but a traveler, meeting the people and learning the land as he goes. Like Kerouac in his North American travels, Guevara runs across poor farm workers trying to keep their families alive. The difference is that Jack is a writer and observer, a pretentious, partying prat; while Ernesto is a doctor, a healer, who cares for patients and people.

I admit it, my heart doesn’t really bleed. I hate commercials that try to guilt me into sending my pocket change to starving kids in third world countries. I run in the opposite direction if anyone tries to motivate me with guilt. I am not appalled at war or poverty or corporate greed. But it takes all kinds of people to keep some semblance of balance in the world. Not that we really have any.

I don’t know about who Che really was, or who he became after the idealistic young doctor toured the countryside on his motorcycle. I just know I like the character they portrayed on the screen. I’d have totally done him.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 3rd, 2010 at 2:16 pm and is filed under road tripping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.