The sad movie that reduced to tears Javier Bardem: “That’s unbearable”
Actors are often required to put themselves through the emotional wringer in the name of performance, but Javier Bardem can’t even bear the thought of rewatching a movie that reduced him to a trembling pile of emotional rubble.
Not that he has any such issues leaving audiences reaching for the tissues, though, with some of his career’s finest work coming when he’s laid himself as bare and vulnerable as can be. Reinaldo Arenas’ biopic Before Night Falls, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s haunting drama Biutiful, and Alejandro Amenábar’s The Sea Inside are just three of his most powerful performances, all of which strike the rawest of nerves.
On the other hand, Bardem is equally adept at being terrifying, whether it’s his unforgettable Academy Award-winning performance as Anton Chigurh in the Coen brothers’ classic No Country for Old Men or hamming it up as one of the best modern James Bond villains in Daniel Craig’s Skyfall.
No stranger to playing in a blockbuster sandbox, Bardem has occupied either end of the divide for one of the most powerful corporations in Hollywood after starring as Johnny Depp’s spectral nemesis in Pirates of the Caribbean sequel Dead Men Tell no Tales before lending his authoritative gravitas to the studio’s live-action remake of The Little Mermaid as King Triton.
Clearly, he’s got no issues signing on to appear in an updated version of a classic Disney animation, but there’s one he’d probably steer well clear of after admitting he can’t even make it to the credits. “I cannot watch Bambi,” he admitted to W Magazine, “That’s unbearable!”
He doesn’t name the specific scene that’s turned him off the 1942 favourite, but it’s easily inferred. After all, the moment where the title character’s mother shuffles off this mortal coil has been singled out by multiple generations as being a devastating emotional awakening, and it made such an impact on Stephen King that the author who built his brand on the back of scary stories is adamant it’s actually a horror flick.
Quentin Tarantino is another to be left shaken by the most harrowing moment in the history of family-friendly cinema, and so is Bardem’s fellow Oscar winner Brendan Fraser, so it’s hardly an isolated incident to hear of a grown adult – famous or not – flat-out refusing to relive the traumatising experience of watching Bambi’s mother meet an agonising demise.
Then again, Bardem did cop to being a “very easy” crier who can end up blubbering during the festive season when Christmas adverts show the character coming home for the holidays, which “breaks his heart.” On the other side of the coin, anyone to have seen Bambi as a youngster fully supports and endorses his position, such is the way that single scene seared itself into the collective consciousness.
