Slate magazine’s commentary on The Motorcycle Diaries is as political a movie review as I have ever read. The film is is a dramatization of Che Guevara’s book of the same name, a rough journal of his early, pre-revolutionary motorcycle adventures in Argentina and Chile. The author of the review, Paul Berman, apparently attended the screening of the new film at the Sundance Film Festival, at which the audience gave it a standing O. He isn’t happy about that.

The political realities of Cuba are obscured to us North Americans behind a swirl of competing filters. Our friends have vacationed there and told us stories of cheap backpacker hotels only a few blocks from the beach, our parents have hit the all-inclusives, and their stories have even less to do with actual Cuba. Nobody is taking the hard line “Miami Cubans” at face value, we mostly suspect they’re sore that the rich moneyed class of capatilist rulers got booted out by the revolutionaries, and who has sympathy for that angle? As much as any of these, the myth of Che colours our mental landscapes of Cooba. Che with an extra-capital C. The arrogant, hairy, high-contrast cigar chomper who looks out of our T-Shirts like a mountaineer staring down a vista. This is the guy who means “cuban revolution” to us Northeners (those of us, at least, who actually know that Che was involved in the Cuban revolution, one suspects a lot of T-Shirt wearers don’t). Somewhere behind all these competing paint jobs is actual Cuba, and who knows what goes on there?

I think Che is fascinating, and I’m excited there is a movie about the “El Poderoso” days. I’m glad that this Slate guy was pissed enough to point out the major problems here. In my excitment (look: a Norton in South America!), I otherwise probably would have sought out this film with my mental guard well down.

If you’re at all curious about what’s actually going on right now in Cuba, here is a strong opinion on that topic. In the form of a movie review. It’s worth reading. The Cuba part is at the end. The rest is a thoughty and damning take on the semiotics of Che the rebel and Che the new movie.

The Cult of Che – Don’t applaud The Motorcycle Diaries.

Unlike most movie reviews, it ends in a hand-translated poem from a political poet.