I watched Motorcycle Diaries today. It is the most powerful movie I’ve seen this year.
Two protagonists, Ernesto Che Guevara and Alberto Granado, plan to travel 8000km from Argentina to Peru on a motorcycle within 4 months. Along the way, they stay at a house of a rich family, where Ernesto meets a woman who promises to wait forever for him, only to send him a letter that redefined the word forever within a couple months. 10240 km and 6 months later, they land in San Pablo, Peru, where they will spend 3 weeks working with a doctor in a land plagued by leprocy. The land is divided in two by a wide river, with the patients living on the south side and the healthy doctors and nuns on the north side. The ill will be fed food only if they attend mass. “How can you feed your body when you haven’t fed your soul?” says the head nun. It is clear that these nuns and doctors care and love for the patients under the condition that the ill heed to their own agenda. But Ernesto does the opposite, adapting to the needs and wants of the ill instead.
Near the end of the movie, in what is the most telling of Ernesto’s development throughout the journey, he celebrates his birthday on the north side. He quietly escapes outside, and swims across the river against the wishes of his friend. Crowds gather on both sides. The North beg him to come back. The river’s never been crossed before, and asthma stricken Ernesto was not the ideal man to change that fact. The South, though, all gather and shout words of encouragement, drawing him near, helping him overcome his physical deficiencies. These were the forsaken, the same ones with uncontagious leprocy who were not to be touched without gloves. But they would have waited forever for Ernesto to cross the river and finish his journey.
And you wonder, has the river never been crossed because no one could do it? Or was it because no one wanted to… Perhaps it is in the passion for others that we learn to overcome our own limitations. And it is truly sad that the exercise of such passion is an idealistic and even revolutionary concept at best.