The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) on Netflix
R20042h 6mAdventureBiographyDrama
Two friends leave Buenos Aires in 1952 to cross South America on a leaky Norton 500. Ernesto "Fuser" Guevara is a medical student; Alberto Granado is a biochemist. They aim for Venezuela.
- Netflix4.0/5
- IMDb7.7/10109,899 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes83%
Trailer
Plot summary
Ernesto "Fuser" Guevara, a medical student in Buenos Aires, is a semester short of his degree when he sets out in 1952 with Alberto Granado, an older friend and a biochemist, to see the continent. Their plan is months on the road riding Alberto's aging Norton 500, which they call La Poderosa, and reaching Venezuela in time for Alberto's thirtieth birthday, with a stay at a leper colony in Peru along the way. The motorcycle gives out, so they travel slowly, often on foot, short of money and ready to stretch the truth with strangers, while Ernesto's asthma troubles him. In Chile they fall in with a penniless couple driven onto the road for their communist beliefs, and go with them to the Chuquicamata copper mine, where Ernesto is angered by the way the workers are treated.
Cast
- Lucas Oroas Roberto Guevara (Argentina)
- Franco Solazzias Juan Martín Guevara (Argentina)
Show all 20 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The crew filmed at the same San Pablo leper colony Guevara had visited in Peru, and according to Gael García Bernal, 85% of the people with leprosy in the film were actual patients, some of whom had lived there when Guevara and Alberto Granado worked at the colony.
- Alberto Granado, Guevara's real travelling companion, returned to the San Pablo leprosarium with the film crew and found some of the people he had treated there half a century earlier.
- The scene in which Guevara swims across the river to the leper colony was shot over three nights, with Gael García Bernal swimming across the actual Amazon River.
- The Academy ruled The Motorcycle Diaries ineligible for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar because the co-production between many countries didn't have sufficient elements from any of them to qualify.
- Alberto Granado, Guevara's real travel companion, was invited to the film's Sundance premiere but was refused a US entry visa; he was able to attend a screening later at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.
- After the film's release, tour operators in South America received a surge of inquiries, with some offering Che Guevara-themed trips that let travellers follow the revolutionary's route.
