A youthful and idealistic Che Guevara experiences a spiritual awakening that will forever change him in Walter Salles’ stirring The Motorcycle Diaries, a political and personal travelogue of exceptional sensitivity that may be one of the screen’s all-time great coming of age stories. Acted with equal doses enthusiasm and melancholy by Gael Garcia Bernal, The Motorcycle Diaries is a work of extraordinary insight into the end of innocence for one of the 20^th century’s most fascinating political icons.

The story begins in Buenos Aires circa 1952, where best friends Ernesto Guevara de la Serna (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Alberto Granado (the excellent Rodrigo De la Serna) embark on an exploratory cross-country motorcycle trip. Guevara, 23, is a wide-eyed medical student, and older Granado, 29, a biochemist. They want to see the world and fulfill youthful wanderlust. Unexpectedly, and on the back of a broken down old motorcycle, the trip becomes a veritable Latin American social education as they encounter the many injustices that plague the indigenous cultures across Argentina, Chile and Peru. They ultimately question the economic misfortunes and divides affecting their people, including an illusory cultural separation between Latin American countries that Guevara passionately rejects after settling down to aid an Amazonian leper colony in Peru.

Salles, the talented Brazilian director who gave us 1998’s emotional Central Station, has made a film of soaring vistas that are not of the picture postcard variety, but rather an imposing geographical character that you can feel swirling around Guevara and Granado, sometimes swallowing them, sometimes moving through them.

The Motorcycle Diaries is an epic of sorts, with intimate personal turning points played out on a large social and geographical canvas. The moments of human drama sometimes seem minimal; small by most movie standards, with Salles wisely choosing to let his story unfold as the actors simply react. One particularly affecting moment has Guevara and Granado discovering the ruined, ancient Peruvian Incan city of Machu Picchu, standing high above, struck by the vastness and sophistication of a vanished society, which Salles then poignantly juxtaposes with urban Lima of 1952.

Gael Garcia Bernal, the impassioned young Mexican actor who so memorably vaulted into international cinematic consciousness in 2001’s Mexico City fever-dream epic Amores Perros, is the rare young actor whose choices suggest fearless personal exploration. His portrayals have taken us from the boundary shattering sexual road trip Y Tu Mama Tambien to the depths of seduction and spiritual corruption while committing The Crime of Father Amaro. He’ll next be seen in a daring, homoerotic, psycho-sexual role in Pedro Almodovar’s upcoming Bad Education.

Rarely does an actor look directly into us and say as much with his eyes. Bernal’s young Che, by the end of the picture, carries the weight of the world—or at least his culture—on his back. And the moment he turns this corner and makes a metaphorical and physical journey across the Amazon ranks with the all time great movie scenes. It’s that good.

More than an effective road movie or coming of age story, and more than an historical glimpse into the man who would become the Cuban revolutionary, The Motorcycle Diaries is an essential film about waking up to where and how you fit into the world. And why.