If you know who Gael Garcia Bernal is then you like watch more than just the mainstream movies that are pushed so often since he doesn’t always pop up in the kind of movies that we might see in America unless of course it’s picked up and pushed by a major studio. But his talent has definitely been proven more than a few times and has allowed him to become one of the more celebrated actors in this day and age. While he’s definitely not on the same level as many of the actors that he’s shared the screen he’s still someone that’s worth watching since he tends to plays very believable characters that are easy to relate to on some level. There are a few movies of his that have been noticed by a lot of people and have therefore gained a lot more attention, but a lot of his appearances have been pretty low-key in comparison to his peers. It’s a wonder at this point if he’s going to step into a role that will get him noticed on the same level as so many other actors, but until then he’s still very good at what he does and deserves the praise that he’s given. He has won several awards to date and has been nominated for quite a few.
Here are a few of his best movies.
5. The Motorcycle Diaries
The making of a man such as Che Guevara is a lot of what this movie is about as he and his friend Alberto Granado make their way to travel around South America before the summer’s end in order to have an adventure and volunteer at a leper colony. When their mode of transportation breaks down and they’re forced to slow their pace however they’re forced to see the real conditions that plague the people they pass, and in doing so this changes something in Guevara as he begins to realize just what purpose his life was meant for with each passing day. By the end of the movie he knows what he has to do, and thus is a revolutionary born.
4. Desierto
It does feel as though a lot of people might find conflict with this movie since Sam is, for all intents, a psychopath for killing people without any provocation. Moises and those attempting to cross the border are doing so illegally and are gunned down by Sam, save for Moises and another, who escape and eventually steal Sam’s truck. When Sam manages to shoot one of them, forcing Moises to crash the truck, it becomes a fight between Sam and Moises that eventually ends when Moises leaves Sam for dead after falling off a precipice with him, which breaks Sam’s leg and leaves him helpless.
3. Rosewater
Movies that are focused on the protagonist being imprisoned for apparently little to no reason are usually powerful pieces or are hard to understand completely, but this one is fairly easy. Maziar Bahari reported on something that someone took issue with, and he was detained for well over 100 days and brutally interrogated. The only thing he knew of his interrogator was that they smelled of rosewater, which is a memory that many people might find troubling upon being released, like smells, sounds, and other things that can usually trigger a bout of PTSD when they’re experienced following such a traumatic event.
2. Babel
His part in this movie is fairly short but it’s one link in a chain that begins in Morocco and eventually ends up in Japan. Santiago, the character he plays, is someone that might be a lot of fun for people of his own age, but around kids, he’s a bit questionable since his type of humor is a bit crude and he’s not exactly trustworthy. When he attempts to take his aunt and the two children she’d been watching back across the border this is proven when he ditches them in the desert after crossing illegally and taking off to ditch the cops. From that point on in the movie, his fate is largely unknown.
1. Coco
A lot of animated movies have a great deal of feeling and a very vibrant sense of culture to them, but Coco is something else since it brings such life to the legends that are displayed in the movie that one can’t help but be awed and humbled at times by the sheer weight of the culture that is put on display. While some might want to state that it’s not entirely accurate it doesn’t appear to matter since Coco managed to touch people in a way that was undeniable and left a lot of people thinking that this was far more worthy than many other movies that came out in the same year.
Go and give Gael’s movies a watch some time, he’s a pretty good actor.
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