Chris Enger
Theology
4-29-07
Fourth Quarter Movie Project: "The Motorcycle Diaries"

In the movie, "The Motorcycle Diaries," two best friends, Ernesto (Fuser) Guevara and Alberto Granado travel across South America on their old, out-dated "motocicleta." They are growing bored with the same old things happening everyday, so they set out on a continent-wide adventure, with the plan of ending up at a community of Lepers.

The first stop on the list is Chichina's house. Chichina is Ernesto's girlfriend, and he feels that he loves her. She gives him $15 to buy her a swimming suit on the trip. They leave the shelter and are out on the open road. Shortly after, after many crashes, most of their supplies are destroyed. Alberto is a very good liar. He uses this skill to get them into and out of a lot of things. Ernesto seemed to be okay with the lying until Alberto told an old man with a tumor not to worry about it. After that instance Ernesto seemed separated from Alberto at times, trying to be a better man. He calls Alberto out for his lying, yet Alberto still seems to find a way to change the story up whenever he can.

Alberto seems to always convince Ernesto to do the dirty work, such as swimming out into a freezing lake to retrieve the duck that they shot for dinner. Ernesto gets sick from retrieving the food, yet later proves his goodness by giving his medicine to an elderly woman with the same predicament. Ernesto holds the $15 from Chichina very tightly, not allowing Alberto to waste it, but he gives it to a family in need due to a job loss without any hesitation. He doesn't tell Alberto that he gave it away, he simply did. They finally reach the leper community and upon seeing how bad it is, Fuser swims across the Amazon River to go and be with the Lepers, to save them, a tremendous act of courage. As it turns out, Ernesto is Dr. Ernesto "Che" Guevara, on his way to help Fidel Castro overthrow Fulgencio Batista in the Cuban Revolution.

This movie has many moral themes, but the one I am going to center on is the split between goodness and evil, between Alberto and Ernesto. In the beginning, the two young men seem more or less the same. The first time I noticed a difference was when Alberto wanted to tell the old man that the tumor was not a big deal and Ernesto stuck to his beliefs and insisted that the man had a tumor and that it should be checked out. This hurt the pair, as the man wasn't as generous as he could have possibly been, but Ernesto did the right thing, and he knew it.

The second instance is when Alberto asks Ernesto to give him the money from Chichina to purchase a prostitute. Ernesto refuses, claiming he doesn't have the money. His statement is true, because he gave the money to the family crippled by unemployment. He sacrifices the easy life, fifteen American dollars is a lot of money in South America, to be generous to complete strangers. (I wish I could do that.) Alberto proceeds to gamble with the rest of their money. He wins, but it was still a bad idea because he spends it all on a prostitute anyway.

The final example of the pure goodness of Ernesto is when he risks everything, to swim across the Amazon and help cure the Leper community. His condition from earlier when he caught an unknown disease is certainly unfit for swimming, and everyone tries to convince him to stay. He realizes that there shouldn't be a special community just for the Lepers, and how snobby the modern people are, so he just hops into the river and swims across. He makes it, cheers break out from both sides of the river, uniting both sides.

Dr. Ernesto "Che" Guevara is a genuinely good man, and if I could become more like him in any single way, much less in every way, I would have to consider myself a better person. He stands for the same ideals as the Jesuits, mainly "man for others."