Let the world change you...and you can change the world.
Overview
Based on the journals of Che Guevara, leader of the Cuban Revolution. In his memoirs, Guevara recounts adventures he and best friend Alberto Granado had while crossing South America by motorcycle in the early 1950s.
Ratings
Curator score: 8.0/10
IMDb: 7.7/10
Letterboxd: 3.95/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 83%
Metacritic: 75
TMDB: 7.4/10
Director
Walter Salles
Production
Film4 Productions, South Fork Pictures, Tu Vas Voir, BD Cine
Cast
Gael García Bernal, Rodrigo de la Serna, Mercedes Morán, Mía Maestro, Jean Pierre Noher, Lucas Oro, Marina Glezer, Sofia Bertolotto, Franco Solazzi, Ricardo Díaz Mourelle, Gustavo Bueno, Antonella Costa, Natalia Lobo, Erto Pantoja, Cristián Chaparro, Cristian Arancibia, Gabriela Aguilera, Constanza B. Majluf, Víctor Hugo Ogaz, Fernando Farías
Curator Review
Verdict
A stirring road movie that gradually turns into a political awakening, carried by vivid landscape photography and a warm, humane friendship at its center. It works both as an adventure story and as a coming-of-age drama with real historical weight.
Best for
road movies with a sense of discovery
political origin stories
Latin American cinema
friendship-driven dramas
viewers who like lyrical, travel-based storytelling
Skip if
you want a fast-paced biopic with lots of plot mechanics
you prefer films that stay politically neutral
you dislike episodic travel narratives
you need a strict historical docudrama rather than a reflective dramatization
Overview
The Motorcycle Diaries is at its best as a journey film: dusty roads, improvised repairs, border crossings, and the slow accumulation of experience. Walter Salles treats South America as both a physical landscape and a moral education, letting the scenery and the encounters do as much storytelling as the script.
Worth noting
What begins as a youthful adventure becomes something more serious and more moving. The film is less interested in mythmaking than in showing how empathy can be radicalized by direct contact with poverty, illness, and inequality. That shift gives the movie its emotional force.
Bottom line
Gael García Bernal and Rodrigo de la Serna make the friendship feel lived-in and affectionate, which keeps the film from becoming purely didactic. Even when you know the historical endpoint, the movie remains compelling because it captures the moment before a life hardens into legend.
Top Letterboxd reviews
mags (4★) · 1960 likes
god made gael garcia bernal 5'7" because she knows he would be too powerful if he was any taller. Imagine being a man and knowing you'll never look half as good as gael garcia bernal in the motorcycle diaries (2004). he was out here making the South American landscape the second most beautiful thing in the movie
Charlie (5★) · 1199 likes
stateless communism and proletarian internationalism got me SOAKING.
máte vargas (free 🇵🇸) (4★) · 1070 likes
Los incas y los incapaces
Isabella Haack (4★) · 973 likes
And on the seventh day god made Gael Garcia Bernal
Moses Ochs (4.5★) · 716 likes
Che Guevara really set the template for people who go backpacking across Europe on their gap year and supposedly find themselves