Jornal da Mostra
09 de fevereiro de 2004
Berlin 2004 - Documentary takes a lift on Salles bike
An official explanation is still missing about why The Motorcycle Diaries, by Walter Salles, was taken away of the 54th Berlin Film Festival selected films list. Berlins consolation was showing the documentary Traveling with Che Guevara, an Italian documentary by the journalist Gianni Minà, embarrassing starting on its title, which scorns the main figure of the real character of Salles film and of this documentary Alberto Granado, 81-year-old, Ches trip companion, a communist globalizations dream survivor dinosaur.
As mythology only contemplates those who die young and beautiful, all the glories in the documentary seem to be aimed to Che, even in Granados presence, who lived the same adventures and heroism of going up South America on bikes, walking and on rafts from Cordoba, in Argentina, going through Chile, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela, in 1952 - Che being a 23-year-old Medicine student and Granado a 29-year-old biologist.
It was an initiating trip, when they met a continent, its people, its culture, exploitation and misery, trip that the smart American producer and actor redeemed to cinema 50 years later, giving the direction to Brazilian Walter Salles. Those who saw Salles film at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2004 say this is his best work. Those who didnt must wait until May, in the next Cannes Film Festival, the festival that so translated its preference, in the Marxist economy jargon, the surplus value in The Motorcycle Diaries.
The Italian documentary seems to be a prize of consolation to its director Gianni Minà, 65 year-old, considering that he was the one who had the rights to take the Diaries to the cinema and dreamed with shooting the film for 15 years, as he revealed in Berlin at the presentation of this work. Despite all emotions anticipated by the documentary, it wouldve been better if it hadnt been seen before Walter Salles film. If it serves to suck some of the emotions that the film should hold exclusively, it also registers how capricious and rich is the production fictional result of The Motorcycle Diaries. Rich and dispossessed as its already seen as a trademark the cinema of Salles.
Demerits apart, we cannot deny that The Motorcycle Diaries is worthy to redeem Alberto Granados important and caring figure, in spite of Che Guevaras myth shadow. It is touching to see Granado inclusively as consultant in the main film, by Walter Salles, making once more a trajectory that made a lot of history.
The best and the worst in Gianni Minàs film: the best is that ideas and freedom and solidarity dreams dont die that easily; the worst is that 50 years later the South American miseries that made up Granado and Guevaras mind just seem to have worsened.
Translation into English: Hugo Casarini and Célio Faria ([email protected])
