I first heard of Che Guevara as a 1980s teenager,
from a friend who had been an exchange student in
Mexico. Too young to understand Latin American
politics, or for that matter any kind of politics, I
didn’t attach much significance to the Che story. But
I was able to pronounce Che's name and connect his
beret image with a short biography. My knowledge
expanded after I lived in Colombia, and read Che’s
Motorcycle Diaries. I liked the book, but
wasn't overwhelmed by it. Intrigued by the adventurous
introduction of Che, however, I was interested enough
to read more. Little by little, I absorbed the
enigmatic Argentine, reading several biographies and
three of his books. The recent Sydney premier of
Walter Salle's cinematic adaptation of Che and
Alberto's diaries gave an opportunity to see a purely
Latin American interpretation.

Hero to some, villain to others, Che is a man
who becomes more multifaceted the deeper you delve.
Jean-Paul Sartre called him ‘the most complete man of
our age’. In the 1960s, he had a CIA bounty on his
head, and he was blamed for inciting armed revolutions
throughout Latin America that cost thousands of
innocent lives. His motorcycle odyssey has not only
spawned the movie and numerous biographical works, but
two American authors, Patrick Symmes and Barbara
Brodman, retraced his steps and wrote their own
two-wheeler chronicles long before this film was
conceived. Very much a man who lived by his own rules,
Che was a seemingly valiant hombre who declared
he was not afraid to die while still a student. A
pin-up boy in nearly every university campus, I think
Che’s enduring popularity is enhanced by the fact he
died young, a hero to losing side of the Cold War. Che
should be studied, if only to understand his
motivations, though many have gone much further,
elevating Che to an almost divine status. This is no
doubt a result of his legacy of eloquent essays and
speeches, and the Cuban Government’s posthumous
efforts to deify him. Partly, too, a result due to
the appeal of Che’s unconventional life story. Che was
tutored at home by his mother until age nine. He was a
chronic asthmatic who smoked Havana cigars. A man who
wore army boots and fatigues to UN forums. A hawk
during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he spent his Sundays
volunteering his labour, and loved poetry. Communist
and chess player, rugby player and magazine editor.
Inventor and patent holder of a roach insecticide. A
mountain climber and economist. A man who wielded the
surgeon’s scalpel one day and a machinegun the next. A
man whose final words, facing the firing squad, were
‘Shoot, coward!’

But of these faces of Che you see little in the
film, because it is restricted to a particular seven
month period of his life. Based on Che and Alberto
Granado’s books, any discussion of the film’s merit
should begin by comparing it to the written record,
bearing in mind the diaries themselves are not candid
snapshots. The journey began in December 1951;
Alberto’s diary appeared in 1978, 27 years after the
trip, and 11 years after Che was killed. Alberto’s is
a conventional journal, with daily entries. Che’s
‘diary’, however, is really a memoir, with a few dates
sparsely scattered throughout. Che’s notes were
written firstly on the road, then rewritten again by
Che more than a year after he returned. The
handwritten journal was later transcribed and edited
by Che’s second wife Aleida March de la Torre,
published as Notas de Viaje well after Che’s
death. Che’s biographer Jorge Castañeda identified at
least one discrepancy between Aleida’s account and
passages published by Che’s father which drew upon the
same original notebooks. An expanded, newer
translation has recently been published by Ocean
Books; Che’s daughter has stated the family ‘edits
without changing what he meant’.

The final page of Che’s memoir contains a
passage entitled An Afterthought, (titled 'A
Note in the Margin' in the Ocean Books edition) with
the footnote that it was written after Che got home,
and it is not clear in which country it took place. In
it Che describes a mysterious night meeting with a
stranger and in no uncertain tone describes his
metamorphosis into a man ‘ready to combat’. It is
perhaps the most polemic and apocryphal part of the
book; there is no corroborating passage in Alberto’s
diary. My own opinion is that the Afterthought
is an allegory for the ‘new Che’ and may never have
happened. Critics would say the discrepancies and
delays in editing and publication detracts from their
frankness and accuracy; Che’s later Bolivian Diary
was the subject of much intrigue over whether it
was a doctored instrument of propaganda.

Having read both Alberto’s and Che’s published
diaries (in English), I think this is a valid but
minor point. The diaries cannot mask their youthful
enthusiasm, and contain plenty of improper behaviour.
We can only guess at the full story, perhaps
containing slurs and bawdy anecdotes, and hope that
one day they become available. After all, the unedited
diary of Anne Frank wasn’t available for many years
for similar reasons of prudishness. But really, would
a few scandalous revelations obscure the overall
trans-continental adventure? I doubt it. Whatever
abridgement went on doesn’t mean the diaries are not,
viewed as a whole, credible chronicles. The two
diaries were synthesised into a screenplay by José
Rivera and Walter Salles, who hired Alberto, now over
80 years old, as a consultant to ensure accuracy. The
actors are said to have read the unedited diaries.

By stroke of pure co-incidence I was in Iquitos
during filming. I was disappointed to be informed that
the film set was closed to the public. However, I did
meet Dr Granado and his family one day at Iquitos’
Quistococha Zoo. He was a jovial old fellow, though
obviously a bit less energetic these days than he was
in '52. Returning to Sydney I had to wait for the
Australian release which came months later than the
Northern Hemisphere, reading divided reviews on the
internet, teased by frustratingly slow MPEG downloads
from the official website. Then last week I saw
Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton talking about it
on ABC’s At The Movies programme; the
Australian release was imminent. Margaret awarded 4
stars out of 5, David gave 4½. I jumped on the
internet and procured tickets to an advance screening
at Leichhardt’s Palace Cinema on the 8th of December.

Arriving at the Palace, I have never seen so
many Che T-shirts in all my life; there was a door
prize for the best Che costume. Middle-aged people
were well represented in the audience - in fact I
would say in the majority; foreign accents filled the
air. Picking up our free Che poster and an envelope of
political pamphlets, my brother and I entered the
theatre. Inside the cinema a spokesman delivered a
speech that was laudatory of Che, critical of Bush,
Packer and Murdoch, and inviting everyone to Green
Left Weekly’s upcoming ‘Revolución Harbour
Cruise’. Or, you might be interested in becoming a
brigadista in the ‘First solidarity brigade
from Australia’ planned for Venezuela. At a cost of
around $4000 (mainly for the airfare) only die-hard
socialistas need apply.

The spokesman didn’t mention how much the
political winds have changed in the 52 years since Che
and Alberto made their journey. Thousands died in
civil wars that were partly inspired by Che, who wrote
guerrilla textbooks. Argentina lost a war with
Britain, and more recently, a financial crisis that
saw its peso-dollar parity evaporate overnight. The
Chuquicamata copper mine depicted in the film isn’t
owned by foreign interests anymore, but CODELCO, a
nationalised Peruvian company. Yet the indigenous
people of South America still struggle on under much
the same miserable conditions as they always have.

Finally the lights dimmed and the film was
underway. The opening scenes show Che and Alberto
packing their bags, planning over a map of South
America, Che declaring “I want to get laid in every
country”. It soon became apparent that the full
vocabulary of Spanish swear-words were to be employed,
invariably translated into English as the F word. The
viewer soon becomes desensitised, even enamoured by
the vulgarities, as more often than not they are used
without malice.

I won’t spoil the show by telling what happens
next. But I will note that the film contains plenty of
omissions. Firstly, where is the episode where Che,
caught in the middle of the night with a bad case of
diarrhoea, defecates out the window sill onto their
host’s tin of sun-drying peaches, thence beating a
hasty retreat? Or the scene where Che shoots dead his
host’s pet dog one night, imagining it was a puma?
Also missing from the cinematic version is the passage
in Alberto’s diary where Alberto ignores a peasant
woman’s silence to fill his basket with cassava,
paying her half the market price. The pair’s run-in
with the police in Colombia doesn’t rate a mention.
There are many other omissions. Even the map used in
the promotional poster is misleading - it doesn't show
that part of their journey was as stowaways on vessel
off the coast of Chile. I guess Salles couldn’t
include everything in his film, cuts had to be made,
and there are plenty of other un-altruistic acts
portrayed by both protagonists, enough to blunt any
alleged bias: Che emerges less than flatteringly from
the Chilean dance hall scene. Tellingly, Che’s
Afterthought, viewed by some as the memoir’s
most dramatic passage, is absent from the film,
perhaps because it is not corroborated by Alberto,
and, as published, is not assigned to any particular
location. Its omission removes the strongest
revolutionary words in either book: “… I feel my
nostrils dilate, savouring the acrid smell of
gunpowder and blood, of the enemy’s death; I brace my
body, ready for combat…”

There is one major departure from the diaries: the
scene where Che leaves a party to swim across the
Amazon - a feat he achieved in daylight on a different
day, not the night of the party

So, all-inclusive documentary it ain’t. But
The Motorcycle Diaries admirably attempts to
distil a true story (unlike so many Hollywood films
these days.) For me, The Motorcycle Diaries is
two things. Firstly it is highly visual film, an
outdoor adventure tale shot in vivid South American
countryside. The scenery is simply breathtaking. Full
marks to Salles for shooting outdoors and on location,
using local actors speaking lingua franca, the
same way he did so successfully in Central Station
Brazil. This film breathes life. The music
soundtrack delivers as well as Salles’ casting: an
auditory odyssey that drifts through several
republics, sampling a little of each.

Secondly it is the portrayal of the youthful
adventures of one of South America’s more intriguing
personas. It is not essential nor even advantageous
for the viewer to know of Che’s later, more infamous
deeds. Neither is this one of those films where you
could say ‘read the book first’. In fact the opposite
could be advised. That Che was an enemy of capitalism
is not covered in the film; Che is aged only 24. Those
who choose to shout it down as sugar-coated
hagiography forget that personalities like Guevera
were ordinary people, with the same spectrum of human
emotions as you and I. Friendship, anger, love, a
sense of justice, and a hearty dose of humour. It is
the portrayal of these emotions, especially during the
pair’s stay at the leprosarium, that is the film’s
strength.

As a film that entertains and informs, I give
the Motorcycle Diaries the thumbs up. I found
the 'Coca-leaf Communion' scene a little too drawn
out, but the scene where he gives the destitute
miner's wife his coat was very moving. It is not a
History Channel vignette of Che, nor was it intended
to be. ‘Before he changed the world, the world changed
him’ says the promo. It gives some clues to the
shaping of the man, by the Latin Americans themselves,
but not the entire picture. For that you should read
Castañega’s or Anderson’s excellent Guevara
biographies (or, for Hollywood’s take on Che, see the
1969 Omar Sharif flick Che!) Che’s guerrilla
activities are mentioned at the end when a brief
summary flashes up on the screen. I could not help but
note that the audience was deathly silent during these
few seconds, in contrast to the roars of laughter
during most of the film.

Although Salles’ theme is that the journey was
formative to Guevara’s political beliefs, just how
much of an influnce is a moot point. Che was also
greatly influenced by his mother Celia, the rise of
the Peróns (he once wrote to Eva Perón, cheekily
asking her for a jeep), and various other journeys he
made through South and Central America. It is often
overlooked that Che undertook a solo expedition in
Argentina’s northwest in 1949, aged 21, covering some
2500 miles on a bicycle with a bolt-on Cucciolo
motor. He also kept a diary of this journey,
incorporporated by his father into his biography Mi
Hijo El Che. To my knowledge there is no English
edition, and with the current popularity of Salles'
film, even the Spanish edition is scarce. Che also
sailed on voyages to Brazil and Trinidad in the
merchant marine in 1950. So it could be argued Che was
an experienced traveller prior to his journey with
Alberto. Later Che travelled Latin America a second
time, revisiting Cusco, climbing Mexico’s Mt
Popocatepetl, exploring Maya ruins and witnessing
Guatemala’s civil war. No diary exists of that period,
just a collection of letters and essays published in
English as Back On The Road: A Journey to Central
America. I am sure an entertaining sequel could
be made about these additional adventures, along with
his exploits as a guerrilla in the Congo and Cuba.

Watching the film, I was left with the feeling
Alberto was the extrovert, Che the cautious one, not
quite the same impression I had from reading the
diaries. Salles’ film concludes with a silent cameo of
the real Alberto, now in his 80s, watching an old
Venezuelan cargo plane bundle Che off down the runway.
It is a fitting, realistic finale. But that is not
the only connection with the real Che. Alberto's part
was played by Rodrigo de la Serna, a relative of Che,
whose full name was Che Guevara de la Serna.

Shuffling our way out of the cinema complex, we
passed tables set up by Resistance and Green
Left Weekly. Che T-shirts, badges, fridge magnets,
and a selection of revolutionary literature by Che,
Castro and others were for sale. Propaganda and
paraphernalia: it was the leftie’s field day. It made
me recall a memorable passage in Symmes’ book
Chasing Che, where Che’s ex-girfriend Maria
del Carmen ‘Chichina’ Ferreyra, says of students
looking at a Che poster: ‘They don’t even know who he
was’. Maybe, but after seeing the film we all know a
little more about Che’s early life - and Chichina’s -
than any poster can tell us. That the Green Lefties
managed to screen a copy of the film ahead of the
major cinema chains represents something of a coup. I
am sure Che would be proud.

And I am also sure Che, riding his Norton 500
in that great open road in the sky, would be pleased
to know his film premiered in Norton Street,
Leichhardt, before a full house, long after he died.

Glen David Short is the author of An Odd Odyssey.

His reviews of Granado’s, Guevara’s, Symmes’ and many other Latin American travelogues can be read by clicking here.