For the first time in his life, Ernesto "Che" Guevara contemplates the otherworldly beauty of the Amazon jungle -- and likes what he sees.
El Che is still a kid at this point, a restless youngster exploring Latin America on a motorcycle with his best friend. He ventures into the Amazon in a boat, and the music that accompanies his pilgrimage is everything you would expect the soundtrack for a road movie to be: soulful, moody and ethereal.
It's a busy morning inside Gustavo Santaolalla's recording studio, where the Argentine musician is putting the finishing touches to his score for "The Motorcycle Diaries" -- the coming movie by "Central Station" director Walter Salles that follows Guevara in the early years before he became a political firebrand.
Now the images on the studio monitor show Guevara -- as portrayed by actor Gael Garcia Bernal -- visiting a village populated by lepers. Santaolalla works the massive soundboard in front of him, and a majestic crescendo of gloomy sounds, exotic and orchestral, fills the room.
"It's all organic," says Anibal Kerpel, Santaolalla's longtime collaborator and producing partner. "There's no keyboards here." The scene's soundscapes are a combination of processed guitars and the weird music that Santaolalla creates by locking himself in the recording booth and blowing on PVC plumbing pipes, the kind of hardware you're more likely to find on a construction site than in a recording studio.
The scene is over. Santaolalla -- a bearlike 51-year-old man blessed with a disarming smile and irrepressibly ebullient demeanor -- changes programs on his computer and the monitor begins playing a scene from a different movie. It's "21 Grams," Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's follow-up to "Amores Perros."
An almost unrecognizable Sean Penn is lying on a hospital bed, fighting for his life. The music cue for this scene is equally intense but drastically different in tone.
Where "Motorcycle Diaries" had a tribal feel, combining Andean rootsiness with rock 'n' roll pathos, the score for "21 Grams" makes you think of dying and going to blues heaven -- the languid guitar work illustrating the nocturnal emotional landscape of the movie's wounded souls.
Santaolalla smiles proudly. He is scoring the two most anticipated Latino-themed movies of the year.
Revered as visionary
