Motorcycle Diaries

I saw two movies today. I’d only planned on “Motorcycle Diaries”, but then a colleague at work recommended “Primer”, which is only released to four theatres in the US this weekend. Since one was local, I had to take advantage of it.

“Motorcycle Diaries” was not easy to find. An award winner at Sundance, it was generally released in late September, but seems now to be relegated to the smaller independent theatres. So I found myself in the precocious “West End Village” of Dallas, surrounded by the Mercedes-driving, Starbucks-drinking, NY Times-reading Sunday morning crowd. The movie is based on the early, formative years in the life of Ernesto Guevara (to become later better known as “Che”), and his “road trip” across South America from his home in Argentina shortly before he was to graduate as a medical student specializing in leprosy. It starts as a tale of two young men, one frivolous, womanizing and seeking adventure, one more deep-thinking, and probably in search of his destiny, as well as accompanying his best friend. Both young men grow to adulthood during the journey, and their attitude to life changes until they are similarly idealistic. Their paths separate at the end of the movie, but they are re-united again some 11 years later in Cuba. Che was, of course, later captured in Colombia as part of the revolutionary movement, and executed with the CIA’s tacit approval. Some of the images in the movie, of dis-enfranchised natives of Peru, Chile or Venezuela will live with me for a long time. Think of it, perhaps, as a “Michael Palin” documentary, but from the perspective of the have-nots.

“Primer” is a self-confessed low-budget movie. It’s been reviewed as a movie you either love or hate; having seen it, I interpret this to mean that it’s a movie you either understand, or you don’t. The plot makes “Donnie Darko” look straightforward; I’d like to say it was science fiction, but it almost defies categorization – it challenges our idea of “time” in the same way that Sartre challenged our idea of “being”, and is a movie that I think you have to watch more than once. But then maybe I’m just getting slower.

I wouldn’t recommend either of these movies generically; I’d simply say that, if these are the kind of movies you like, you’ll like these movies. I certainly did.