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If I present you with an image and say, for instance, that it was taken at night, you can either believe me, or not; it matters little to me, since if you don’t happen to know the scene I’ve “photographed” in my notes, it will be hard for you to find an alternative to the truth I’m about to tell. But I’ll leave you now, with myself, the man I used to be… -- Ernesto Guevara de la Serna

Ernesto Guevara’s “The Motorcycle Diaries” is not the travel journal of a man who would become one of Time Magazine’s “icons of the century.”

Rewritten by Guevara some years after the journey, it is a memoir. The entries from his travel diary depicting the events and people encountered on the trip in combination with his ruminations on their later significance provide a rare opportunity to witness the retracing of a remarkable man’s destiny, the solidifying of his identity from an earlier state.

The filmed version of The Motorcycle Diaries originated at South Fork Pictures with executive producer Robert Redford, producers Michael Nozik and Karen Tenkhoff of Wildwood Enterprises.

They immediately recognized the project as a great opportunity to work with Walter Salles, a director who had won Sundance’s NHK grant in 1996 with the script for Central Station.

Says Redford, “The Motorcycle Diaries seemed like the perfect way to collaborate with him, especially since Che Guevara can be such a tricky subject. I knew Walter would handle the story with lyricism and humanity rather than focusing on the politics of who Ernesto would later become.”

Director Walter Salles was already quite familiar with the book when the producers approached him to helm the film. Says Salles, “The book really had an impact on me because it is about a journey to discover not only one’s identity and one’s place in the world, but also about the search for what I think we could call a Latin American identity. I was very moved by the intertwining of this personal search with one that had a larger meaning for all of us who come from those latitudes.”

Salles continues, “When you finish reading this book, you have the impression that you can actually change things in the world, by understanding them and taking part. The beauty of the journey lies in the fact that their perception of the world changed; they didn’t refuse to see. In turn, they would go on to try to change the world, according to what they had come to understand on this journey.”

To bring the coming of age story to the screen, the filmmakers enlisted the aid of one who had been close to the material from its first publication -- Italian journalist and documentarian Gianni Miná, who served as the European editor of “Mi Primer Gran Viaje,” the travel diary of Che Guevara throughout Latin America. Miná would stay on throughout the production as an artistic supervisor.

With Miná, the filmmakers made the first of several trips to Havana, Cuba, not only to begin their extensive research, but also to meet with Guevara’s family and to interview Granado, now in his 80s and as vivacious as ever. They met with Guevara’s widow Aleida March, her daughter Aleida, and her sons Camilo and Ernesto.

To adapt the story, they selected José Rivera, a young, award-winning Puerto Rican playwright who had studied at the Sundance Institute. Director and writer researched together, reading all the existing biographies on Guevara. It would take Rivera two years of writing and rewriting before the script was finished.

To ensure that the story balanced its portrayal of the two main characters evenly, Rivera drew from both Guevara’s travel diary and Granado’s own account of the trip, “Con el Che por Sudamérica.” Unlike “The Motorcycle Diaries,” Granado’s version is not a memoir. It contains the actual entries documenting his observations on the road. The immediacy of the journal and the humor evident throughout were instrumental in not only reconstructing the events that take place within its pages, but the personality of the charismatic man who wrote it, as well.

Says Salles, “José never let the young [Guevara] be confused with his future mythological image. José was more interested in revealing the human side of these two unique characters. He tried to look at these young men as who they could have been, in that moment and time. He retained the humor that is so vitally present in Guevara's book, as well as in Granado's account of the journey. Most importantly, he added layers of gravity as the two travelers went deeper and deeper into their journey – not unlike Ettore Scola’s screenplay for Il Sorpasso.”

Says Rivera, “The challenges to writing this screenplay were many. How do you even begin to approach an iconic figure like Ernesto Guevara? How do you humanize the myth? How do you honor the memory and serve history? How do you give his companion Alberto equal weight? How do you capture the inner geography of a boy turning into a man? How do you capture that flickering pre-1960s Latin America, poised, it seems, between centuries? How do you capture the mind-boggling variety of faces, temperaments, cultures, races and voices? Ernesto Guevara once wrote that a true revolutionary was guided by great feelings of love. Ultimately a writer’s greatest and most singular gift to any film is his or her love for the themes and people of the project at hand. I was lucky. Writing the screenplay and balancing its many demands only required a lot of hard work – lending my love to stories of young Ernesto Guevara and Alberto Granado was easy.”

The filmmakers found early support for the project at FilmFour. In 2001, executive producers Paul Webster and Rebecca Yeldham joined the development process for The Motorcycle Diaries, and the company finance*d the picture.

In the meantime, the director himself set out on a personal journey through the towns and cities mentioned in the books to experience first hand the route that Guevara and Granado had taken 50 years earlier. This first trip allowed Salles to reconstruct the adventure and discover the present-day state of the places described in Guevara’s and Granado’s travel diaries.

Says Salles, “The first impression I had in retracing their steps was that the structural and social problems that caught both Ernesto’s and Alberto’s attention in 1952 are mostly still present today; what was transmitted on the page was still pretty much what I felt in taking the journey. What came as a revelation was how modern and contemporary both books felt. And that may be because the political and social realities of the Latin American culture have not changed all that much from the 1950s to today.”

Once the script was completed, the filmmakers began to prepare for the production. Honoring the origins of the film’s main characters, the filmmakers believed firmly that The Motorcycle Diaries should be an Argentine film, so they set up the production office in Argentina, selecting BD Cine as their Argentine partner. A Chilean partner was then found in Sahara Films, with Inca Cine acting as partner in Peru.

From the outset, Salles knew that the authenticity of the project would rely heavily on shooting the film where the events actually took place. To that end, the first full scout for locations took place in early November of 2001, when the production team visited Argentina. Full scouting throughout all the different countries involved began in January the following year and continued until May.

Equally important to the authenticity of the film and the different cultures portrayed within it was the decision to use local actors for each region. Casting sessions were held throughout Latin America, and actors were selected from Argentina, Chile and Peru.

For the role of Ernesto Guevara, however, Salles would make an exception for talented Mexican actor Gael García Bernal, whom Salles describes as “one of the most unique and talented actors of his generation.” Intrigued by the opportunity to portray the legendary man in his earlier years, Bernal accepted.

Says Bernal, ”Che has had a strong influence on our lives, especially for the ones born after the Cuban Revolution… [My generation] was born with the idea of a modern Latin American hero. He was a man who struggled for his beliefs, an Argentinean man who fought in a country that was not his country, who became a citizen of Latin America, a citizen of the world… I think this story may strengthen people to search for their own beliefs.”

With Guevara cast, an actor still needed to be found to bring the role of Alberto Granado to life. During casting sessions conducted by Walter Rippel in Buenos Aires, one actor stood out in particular: Rodrigo de la Serna. A young performer trained mainly in theater in his native Argentina, de la Serna makes his international debut in The Motorcycle Diaries.

Says Salles, “His physical resemblance with the young Alberto is staggering, but this is not why I ended up choosing him. I think that Rodrigo is a young actor in the tradition of the great Italian actors like Vittorio Gassman and Alberto Sordi. He is always ready to surprise us, blending humor and drama in a unique manner. There was also an incredible coincidence, which I realized only after casting him: Rodrigo de la Serna is a second cousin of Ernesto Guevara de la Serna.”

The cast was rounded out both with experienced actors and actresses such as Mercedes Morán, Mía Maestro and Jean Pierre Noher as well as with actors who will be making their screen debut in The Motorcycle Diaries.

Once the lead actors were cast, they began preparing for their roles, reading biographies and viewing interview footage of Granado shot by Salles and Miná during one of their trips to Cuba. Bernal began reading the books Guevara was reading during that period in his life (French existentialists, Latin American social theoreticians), while de la Serna read Granado’s unedited diaries and began gaining the 15 pounds necessary to play the part. In addition, Salles took the two actors to Cuba to meet Granado and the Guevara family. Granado would travel to the set to provide additional inspiration, once production was underway.

As the start of production grew closer, the two actors began intensive training for a period of 14 weeks. They learned how to ride the 1939 Norton 500 and practiced their soccer skills. Bernal took classes to perfect his Argentine Spanish and worked out daily to achieve the athletic form that characterized young Ernesto. His fitness program would also serve him well when it came time to shoot the scene where Ernesto swims across the Amazon. De la Serna took mambo and tango lessons and learned to master the accent from Córdoba.

Along with the rest of the crew, both actors participated in seminars and lectures to further their knowledge and enhance their work in the film. Topics included: “Argentina in the 50s,” “Argentine Film,” “Popular Music of the 50s,” “The Incan Empire” and “Chile and Peru in the 50s.”

The production also sought the assistance of Luis Valdez and Ricardo Achenbach as consultants on leprosy, one of the pivotal subjects in the storyline, and of Dr. Guillermo Menga on “The effects of asthma during the 50s.”

As the actors immersed themselves in training, the director continued the process of defining the overall aesthetic for the film. Salles and his team drew inspiration from the photographs taken by Guevara during the trip, as well as the evocative work of Aimará photographer Martin Chambi. Production designer Carlos Conti worked on reconstructing the era, alluding to the historical context, while striving to give the production a somewhat modern feel, to underscore the timelessness of the story’s themes.

Says Conti, “Considering Che is a modern hero, I thought the production design should not emphasize any particular period; everything should look as contemporary as possible. We tried to create a very subtle set so decoration would not overwhelm the actors in their environment. Cinematographer Eric Gautier, costume designers Beatriz Di Benedetto, Marisa Urruti and Walter Salles and I agreed on the use of a limited palette of colors. During the preliminary scout we found the character of the various locations to be quite chaotic, so we wanted to create a more unified look for the film.”

Collaborating with director of photography Eric Gautier, the director developed a cinematic style for the film. Says Salles, “We opted for a simple, direct cinematic grammar to tell this story and the simplicity of the super 16 format, blended with a few images shot at night on 35mm. Most of the time, I refrained from imposing a ‘mise en scene,’ trying to be carried by the flow of what we were finding on the road, and not imposing pre-conceived ideas. We were also trying to do the opposite of what one would call ‘induced documentary.’ We basically tried to film the story as if it were unfolding under our very eyes.”

Having made the unusual decision to shoot the film in script sequence, the director worked with the cinematographer to create a natural rhythm for the shots, as well. Salles’ approach was similar to his attitude toward developing the script with Rivera. Explains Salles, “I always thought that this film should be constructed in layers. A road movie has by definition an episodic quality, but that can be a danger if you don’t grant the time for the information to sink in slowly and delicately. In the story, the social and political reality of Latin America takes over little by little, in subsequent layers of gravity.

This is what I tried to convey, with the help of such extraordinary actors as Gael and Rodrigo, is that there is not a defining moment where everything changes. Rather, the layers are superimposed delicately, in such a way that you understand that they have been transformed by the journey. In the narrative, you need the silence in order to hear the chaos, and you needed to respect the inner time in the fate of the characters. We didn’t want to impose an unnatural rhythm to the story, but to let it in fact evolve quietly until the end.”

The decision to shoot in chronological order provided the opportunity for certain parallels to emerge between the production and the journey it was trying to capture. Shooting in the actual locations –- at times as exotic to the actors as they were to the pair being portrayed -- enhanced not only the authenticity of the project, but its creative possibilities, as well. In keeping with the spirit of the original journey, Salles encouraged the actors to improvise with the people they met on the road in order to incorporate the material into the film.

Says Salles, “Little by little we introduced scenes that integrated what was being offered to us generously by reality into the filmic structure. And that happened, more specifically, from the moment where the bike breaks down which reflects, interestingly enough, what both Alberto and Ernesto tell in their respective diaries. When they were on the bike they had the possibility of going from point A to point B, but once the bike broke down, they were obliged to hitchhike and walk. They were in the position now to make much more direct contact with the people that were living in Latin America.

The same thing happened to us, as we were entering deeper and deeper into the heart of Latin America and most especially when we arrived in Peru and were confronted with the Inca heritage. We were approached by Indians who spoke Quechua who were asking of us to initiate a dialogue, and we integrated the results of those encounters in the film. In some ways, these scenes, I think, are closer to the spirit of the original journey than scenes that would simply revisit events that are specifically told in the book.”

Full preparation for the shoot commenced mid-June of 2002 and lasted 16 weeks, with principal photography beginning in mid-September. The film was shot in over thirty locations, where most of the actual events occurred -- Buenos Aires and Bariloche in Argentina; Temuco, Atacama Desert and Valparaíso, as well as the mine visited in Chile and Iquitos and Machu Picchu in Peru. The Motorcycle Diaries was shot over the course of 84 days.

In the end, the journey the filmmakers undertook themselves in order to bring the coming of age story to the screen had its own effect, as well.

Says Salles, “If there’s one thing I can tell you about this experience that we had – ‘we’ being the group of people who went on the road for two years to do this project – is that we were also very different when we got to the end of our journey in comparison to where we were when we started it.”