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 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Debunking the myth of Che. Che Guevara’s iconic status has been caught in a downward spiral for some time now. From rebel icon to promotional poster boy, his many incarnations in the modern world would surely have the revolutionary communist freedom fighter spinning in his grave. Walter Salles’ adaptation of The Motorcycle Diaries, Guevara’s record of his first trip across Latin America in his early twenties, is set to redress the balance. “The whole purpose was to bring life back to the myth,” says Mexican superstar Gael Garcia Bernal, who seems born to play Che. Already a symbol of rebel cool himself, the politically savvy 25-year-old embodies Ernesto Guevara as a flawed if principled human being, much like anyone else. Travelling through what were often unmapped regions with his buddy Alberto Granado, the pair get up to the usual student traveller mischief and experience what would later be interpreted as seminal encounters. Exposure to the realities facing exploited labourers and work at a leper colony gave Guevara the seeds of beliefs that shaped the future of Cuba. Not bad, for what essentially started out as a gap year trip. For the movie’s three young leads, all children of post-dictatorship Latin America, making this film sounds like an equally life-defining experience, with Bernal in particular spending years researching the role. For his Argentinian co-stars Mia Maestro and Rodrigo de la Serna, debunking the myths that have enshrined and corrupted the Argentine Guevara’s memory was especially important. “I hope this movie takes him out of the t-shirts” says Maestro. De La Serna later adds, “there’s a reactionary part of Argentina which hates the figure of Che. But I’m sure they’ll like this movie because it makes him more human.”  The Motorcycle Diaries doesn’t go in for political banner waving. “It’s not a street pamphlet shout,” says Bernal. “I believe everyone will leave the film with a certain serene confusion.” And who wouldn’t enjoy that?
Skye Sherwin
The Motorcycle Diaries, on selected release 27 August 04.
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