Cult of Che

I finally saw The Motorcycle Diaries tonight at the Ritzy. I had been holding off seeing it for all the hype - not only surrounding the movie, but surrounding the iconic status of Che Guevara also. I've never quite understood the "cult of Che" as eulogized on hundreds of students' t-shirts and bedroom walls (students whose fees have no doubt been paid by mummy and daddy and who claim to understand oppressed peoples' lives without actually knowing any). Though I respect his political views, I have never quite reconciled the political rhetoric with his relentless, bloody, murderous violence.

You've read all the reviews so you know that The Motorcycle Diaries is based on the 23-year-old Ernesto 'Che' Guevara's 8,000km road trip from Argentina to Venezuela, with his friend, on a dilapidated Norton 500 motorbike; know that the trip exposed this middle-class medical student to the harsh and unjust realities of peasant and indigenous lives; know that the seeds of Guevara's "revolution" were thus sown on the road.

But I must admit that despite all my reservations, Walter Salles' movie quietly seduced me with its tender charm. Not only was the accounting of Guevara's political coming-of-age unsentimental and balanced, but the cinematography is one of the best I've ever seen. (It also helps that Gael Garcia Bernal as Che is extremely easy on the eye!)

Related links:
+ Che trippers
+ Terrorist chic in popular culture
+ Call them assailants, bombers, captors, commandos, fighters, guerrillas, gunmen, militants, radicals, rebels, or activists. Anything but terrorists.