Alternate Best Actor 2004: Gael García Bernal in The Motorcycle Diaries

Gael García Bernal did not receive an Oscar nomination, despite receiving a BAFTA nomination, for portraying Ernesto “Che” Guevara in The Motorcycle Diaries. 

The Motorcycle Diaries follows a younger Che Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado as they take a purposeful trek across South America. 

The notion of the film exists within “and now you know the rest of the story” as the main character of Che Guevara would obviously become important to world politics latter in life, where here he is just a younger man wishing to explore his continent to gain a better understanding of it, while also very much still existing as just a man in a sort of flight of fancy in its own way. The film is purposefully playing with both notions of Che as just a young man and the inklings of where Che will end up later on. As Che we have Gael García Bernal, who is an actor who fits into a specific frame for me. An actor who I rarely ever dislike his performances but at the same time his performances never quite stand out for me beyond being essentially good. A strange consistency that one could argue is both criticism and praise in a way. Which leads me to his performance in this film, where I have to be honest, I wouldn’t say I feel massively different about much of the work of García Bernal here. Which largely isn’t a truly detrimental thing. As García Bernal’s mostly low key performance works in favor of playing Che just as a man most of the time without crafting some symbol of a person first. The film itself takes an often naturalistic approach to the journey where we just witness the man go from person to person, place to place and have an experience with those people there. Sometimes it is theoretically a bit more dramatic, but it is all presented as a calm type of discovery.

García Bernal gives a good performance in playing the moment more so than the man as we see him early on with his journey where we see him interact with girlfriend, where García Bernal plays with genuine tenderness but with just a bit of extra lust of a young man trying to get a bit further with her in terms of pace. García Bernal has the right casual ease that it isn’t necessarily the most important thing to him in his life at this moment yet there is still a quiet devotion in his way regardless. We have his friendship with Alberto where they too are just friendly, represented in the ease they have with each other where the chemistry the two actors share have that innate sense of history. While this is a fundamental and important journey for both men, there is also the proper sense that this is an ongoing story between the men as a pair. García Bernal’s effective as well in specifically having the sense of taking in what they are witnessing as they go through their journey. A journey that at times has a sight seeing quality of just paying witness to the land, where Bernal exudes the right love of the land, but it ends up becoming more complex of a journey when they also spend time with persecuted communists and even an isolated leper colony. 

García Bernal’s performance within experiencing the tougher elements is where he does bring shades of the revolutionary that would come from this journey in part. García Bernal brings again largely in quiet moments of reaction though a bit more pointed and an instance of García Bernal really taking hold of the screen. These moments are remarkable because García Bernal does a few things in crafting the later Che, without just becoming him. The first is where you see the dogged conviction of moments of dealing with his asthma, even making a  very long swim with his condition, where García Bernal brings within his eyes the eyes of a man who will be willing to wage war in multiple countries. While the tasks in this instance are not war, García Bernal brings that kind of incisiveness. Combining that are the moments of reacting to the poverty he sees which García Bernal brings the right nuance and variety to. There is sadness and empathy as he sees the pain of others but there is more than that, as García García Bernal’s performance internalizes and cultivates a certain intensity. An intensity that is more than just caring about the people, but rather a vengeful anger for the people where García Bernal creates this sense of a building fire in the man. Leading to his one major monologue within the film where Che speaks to his dream of uniting the people of the Americas to a common cause. A scene where García García Bernal is great because suddenly he speaks with this determination, but combined with a passionate drive. There’s a man not just angry, rather it is with a pointed vision in mind with a method beyond every word that García Bernal speaks that articulates the revolutionary from just the younger man we knew the rest of the time. It’s a great scene for García Bernal and one very obvious moment where García Bernal, for me, stepped beyond my usual expectation of consistency for something more. And while leading up to that, García Bernal maybe supported that idea a bit more, even then it still worked well for the character and helped to contribute to the impact of the change in Che throughout the film. A striking portrait of a man who is just a man and finding the path of someone willing and wishing to change history.