Skip to main content

"The Motorcycle Diaries" - movie review


“The plan: to travel 8000 kms in 4 months”. And so they travel through the beautiful landscapes and picturesque horizons that melt your heart away. The serene lush green countryside and the milky-white Mountains against the backdrop of blue sky and rugged muddy road that romantically dissolves into the horizon, with the background score that lifts you up from the comforts of your room and throws you asunder into the mountainous terrains and snowy valleys, the movie has already made me go on an exploration myself, before it is too late.

“Each moment splits into two” protagonist writes to his mother on his journey, “melancholy for what was left behind, all the enthusiasm at entering new lands” chile’s frost covered roads with trees and animals eaten up by snow in entirety, nothing but the bike and two adventurers on it are seen for miles and miles along the road. They trip and fall off the bike for the third time since the day adventure began. The roads are desolate and one wonders why? Why would anyone chose to spend time away from an entrancing beauty that encircles your heart in tight embrace and enthrals you with its cold shivers. Snow is all you can see, two men on a bike is all there is to see. The movie leaves a lasting impression on even the casual viewer.

There are cows on the road, but the bike is too old, rusty, patchy and the brakes won’t work. And change occurs; fluid and entrusting. It is on the road to peru that the two men realise the change, adventure fizzles away and the human apathy creases their mind that was hitherto unexposed to such indifference or downright intolerance. “How is it possible that I feel nostalgia for a world I never knew?” the protagonist wonders at the sight of marvellous civilization’s (Incas) remnants, rock sculptures and caves that were once inhabited and now deserted. As if they were running away from a portentous force on their backs, they were all gone, only rocks and caves were left now.

The doctors work with dignity and pride in treating the old, battered and bitten peoples of the place. The young girl’s arm that they treat by cutting it out, the melancholic old man’s feet they treat and nurse all the time, by the end of it, they are changed men. They leave the place after celebrating 24th birthday of the younger doctor with his swimming across the river that divided rich from poor, sick from healthy; they leave on a raft (mambo tango-named after the younger’s mistimed tango dance for a mambo tune)with the morning fog slowly sweeping over and blurring the faces of adorable men and women they have met there.

Muddy roads, shaky camera work, two men on an old greasy bike that leaks and freaks on turns- all of this against the beautiful backdrop of evening sky, travelling lonely on high plains. Sky is blue and the road dry, bike stuttering and the asthma patient in the back who refuses to get treated with his girl friend’s money that he carries with him plaintively.

“I am not the same anymore, at least not the same inside”. The protagonist concludes.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Room number 713...

When she heard the sound of scrabbling under her bed she gaped in horror. The roof was no longer there and the sky was crammed with stars. The yellow lamplight had its neck twisted and the light was dimming, a dark hairy whisker of shadow creeping up to swallow everything. The sliver of light coming in through the parting curtain was the only thing remotely consolatory in the creepy hotel reminiscent of horror movies, old and new. The wooden cabinet shook and the drawers slid out, one after the other, like the many tongues of a hysterical creature of the nights. The clothes hanger slid to a side and revealed the crack in the wall beyond. She tried the light switch but obviously it was not working. The bedspread was damp from something that was not hers – an ache spread through her limbs, paralyzing her, bolting her spine to the cot. A whiff of chill air snaked through the open fisheye hooks of her blouse, circling her rigid frame, raising the hair on the back of her nec...

The moth that covered my face!

My dog came prancing and dancing towards me, I started petting him almost impulsively, took his ears and rolled them over his head hither and thither, stroked his forehead, he was enjoying my attention blushingly perhaps, and he leant his head downwards and was swaying around to get the most of affection. And, suddenly he leapt forward with his hind legs brushing my knee cap, I looked over and he was merrily teasing a moth which apparently fell over on its back and was trying desperately to climb back into a more modest stand. Well, anatomically speaking, the moth had a curved back, smooth with shiny plate like outer skin that extended from front to rear forming quite an armour. It had tiny legs, it was just too hard to find out how many though, drawn so close to the body in a twisted tangled mess, it looked as if, the insect was bothering perhaps a little too much about its legs. On any other occasion, the moth would have leisurely entertained me with its physical theatrics, but this...

Entrenched Prejudices taking the form of Patriotism

What a great way to celebrate the Independence Day? I am bemused, apparently owing to the wide exposure of emotional experiences hitherto seemed innocuous. Delve a little deep into the acquaintance with idea "patriotism", one will invariably be granted with an uncalled inquisition, one gets to stare at a disconcerting vacuum. Why do we brand ourselves with nations that are a mere collection of geographically propelled, culturally augmented, self aggrandizing people? Answer is elusive to many for the reasons best known to them hitherto for their own good are turning skeptical now. Man whom the evolutionists assert shares a common ancestor with chimps and gibbons, naturally after parting his ways with his cousins (chimps, gibbons) choose to retain a comprehensive emotional, physiological and mental disposition. Man, if he ever chooses to embark on a space ship that supposedly travels back in time is bound to diminish his self esteem owing to his impromptu urge to track his ance...