Diarios de Motocicleta (The Motorcycle Diaries)

2 years after I first visited South America, Diarios de Motocicleta (The Motorcycle Diaries) popped up on cinema everywhere to near universal acclaim, and some controversy. The movie is based on Ernesto Guevara' travelogue of same title. In 1952, the 23 years old medical student Ernesto "Fuser" Guevara and his friend Albert Granada decides to leave Buenos Aires behind, and go on a trip around South America on a motorcycle. Wonderful directed by Walter Salles and well acted by especially Gael García Bernal, the movie tells a story about friendship and hardship in a beautiful scenery. It also shows situations that would form Guevara for rest of his life. As some may understand this young medical student would end up as the world most famous revolutionary, but the movie tries not to focus on that at all.

Some bash the movie because they in the end realize they have been cheated into watching a movie about "the evil" Che Guevara. This is just as stupid as all those people walking around with a t-shirt with the iconic Che Guevara picture without knowing anything more about his ideas, beliefs and reasons. In my opinion, this movie is mostly about two young people discovering the world around them for the first time. As a traveler 60 years on you still experience the same things like impoverished indigenous peasants, and huge difference between social classes.

Gustavo Santaolalla playing short snippets on his charango gives a very Latin feeling to the movie, but it was the main song of the movie "Al Otro Lado del Rio" (On the other side of the river) by Jorge Drexler (from Uruguay) which was nominated to an Oscar for best original song. It won that category, but because Jorge Drexler (then) was not very well known, the producers would not let him play his own song on the show. They decided Antonio Banderas should sing instead, and let Carlos Santana play the guitar. One can only guess the (stupid) reason behind that decision. Anyway, Jorge Drexler accepted the award by singing some lines a cappella, and then said goodbye.

Just as Jorge Drexler, this movie deserves a much better fate, and I would recommend anyone to give it a shot.

Cloud Atlas

First time I heard of "Cloud Atlas" by the British author David Mitchell was in 2005 when I met Shaz from London in laidback Nungwi (on the northern tip of Zanzibar, Tanzania). He was engrossed in the story, and when I later picked up a copy as well I have to say the same happened to me as well. Even though Mitchell' English in this book isn't too easy to understand when it isn't your native language...

Without giving too much away, the book (released in 2004) contains 6 nested but interweaving stories spanning from year 1850 to a post-apocalyptic future. The locations are as different as The Pacific, Belgium, California, Britian, Korea and Hawaii. The book is built in a surprising way, where the 5 five first stories are told chronological until a key moment where it is cut off. The sixth story is told entirely before the five first stories are finished in reversed chronological order. I was blown away by the (varied) storytelling even though I'm not very fond of science-fiction stories (like especially story #5). After finishing the book I dug into David Mitchell earlier works like number9dream and Ghostwritten while I really wished that Cloud Atlas could be transferred to the screen (but couldn't see how that would be possible)

Happily I learnt a few years later that the directors behind "Matrix" was insane enough to begin that project. The movie was released in 2012 and pretty much polarized the critics. Not too surprising the directors had to ditch the style of the book (=telling the stories in reversed order). Every story is now even more interwoven into each other and are all told at the same time (without changing the book too much). It is surely an interesting idea to let the actors acting up to 6 different roles. Mostly that is working surprisingly well and shows the diversity of the actors, but sometimes it looks plain stupid when they act another gender than they are. This is for sure a movie where you have to be wide-awake to watch (and may be the reason why some didn't like the movie), and if you haven't read the book before I'm sure a second viewing will be rewarding to pick up more details.

I can heartily recommend both the book and movie, but if you haven't read the book, you should do that first. And after you have done both you can dug deep into the Cloud Atlas Wiki.