The Motorcycle Diaries

I assume this film has been done to death here, but I've just watched
the DVD, and if you haven't yet seen it, you should.

Brilliant.

 

If we're recommending bike movies - The Doctor, the Tornado and the Kentucky
Kid - 95 minutes of Laguna Seca '05 bike porn.... Esp with v loud surround
sound....

Dave

 

In message

And if it's a UKRMer that's got my copy, can I have it back, please?

 

>,
says...

I watched it on Film 4 a few weeks ago.

Hooray for free satellite channels.

 

No excuse, but since I moved here in 1999 I've never had a TV aerial.

 

It is. I must watch the second half tomorrow. It pops up on Film 4.

 

A bike film in the same way Stone is life on a biblical death row.

 

Oh, it's much, much more than a bike film. Especially as the 1939
Not-run expires halfway through Reel One. But i guess you knew that.

The politics are a bit suspect, mind.

 

As it's for my benefit, what politics - in the film - were suspect and why?

I can think of three incidents (I haven't seen it for a couple of years)
that could be seen as heavy handed but that would be more a
criticism of the cinematic plot devices rather than politics per se.

For example: the use of the leper colony as a portrayal of a society
divided (staff on one island and patients on another) was obvious but was
there to give a reason for the main character's subsequent development.

What got on my tits on a political level was the simplistic portrayal of
social classes: good honest working people were salt of the earth types
(the dance); whilst the upper classes were portrayed as leaden,
unimaginative and wrapped up in their selves (the writer).

If I want earnest I'll watch Mike Leigh but to be honest we're back on
cinematic devices as opposed to politics.

 

I'm really worried because this implies that we may have a similar
political outlook in some respects, but this is *exactly* what irritated
me.

 

Since the film was dramatisation of a glimpse of the formative events
that would shape a certain well known revolutionary what would be the
point of creating complex stratas of underlying subtext in the
secondary characters? It's as much a cinematic device as it is a part
of the plot. It's not a fucking documentary or a public information
film. And what's it got to do with politics anyway? What hidden agenda
was served by the production company in portraying a simple working
class having a bit of a dance, considering that the film itself, like
its subject matter, is as controversial as a box of chocolates?

In other words, why are the politics "suspect"?

 

(The Older Gentleman) wrote in

It's foreign, and therefore shite.