THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES
Just been to see
The Motorcycle
Diaries with Joshua and Richard. It’s a
pretty thin film – beautiful scenery but a over simple linear narrative
that repeats itself in cliches and heart-tweaking “moments”. It
feels like a film from a much older age – where those simple virtues of
camaraderie, generosity, idealism, political fire could exist without all the
contemporary layers of irony, cynicism, mindful questioning. Which is of course
the moment in history it sprang from: Ernesto Guevera’s political
awakening. Before the Cold War, before the truths of Stalinism came to light,
before Cuba became sclerotic.
But are
those simple pure idealisms and virtues really naïve and oversimplistic
like this film? Or are they still valid – yet our over-critical
mediasphere has conveniently allowed us to brush them aside as foolish and
childish distractions from the real business of making money and pleasing
ourselves? Are we so mired in fatalistic “realism” that we ignore
the simple fact that: helping other people is the royal route out of
self-obsessed misery. It’s right and natural to support one another. The
neo-liberal creed of greed is good is a recent fallacy that has simply be
repeated so often (as Goebbels recognised) that it has become a truism. The fact
is that it’s a lie: Greed gives us a headache, it makes us grasping,
fearful we’re going to lose stuff and it breeds an atmosphere of ill-will
and mutual suspicion.
I’m aware of
this as I come to the end of a long period of work where I’ve been working
in a team (which is good) but for a largely meaningless enterprise (which is
questionable). Now the urge is to go and do stuff “that I want to
do”, chase after sun, sand, sex and sangria. But as Sucitto says: we live
in a membrane of self, banging our drum, blowing our trumpet and that’s SO
BORING.
So when I was slouched in the
cinema watching the adorable Gael Garcia Bernal as Ernesto helping lepers and
giving his precious dollars to penniless migrant miners I didn’t feel
unduely manipulated by the film – I remembered that doing something for
other people is actually a real relief and I should be doing more of it. Life is
messy and there are millions of people who are really in the shit on the planet.
Cocooning in ever-refined searches for pleasure isn’t going to cut it.
Perhaps a bit of aspiration wouldn’t go amiss…
Posted: Tue - September 7, 2004 at 12:49 AM