Mozart in the Jungle is “a show that has allowed me to enjoy an understand a little bit about classical music,” Gael Garcia Bernal told Entertainment Weekly at the Golden Globes on Sunday, where he won Best Actor for role as Rodrigo de Souza, an off-beat Latino conductor who converses with the historical composers who live inside his head. Perhaps proud of Bernal’s award, Amazon is streaming Mozart in the Jungle online for free this weekend, a privilege usually reserved for Amazon Prime members.
The show takes viewers skin-deep into the world of classical music, but it’s really a tale about millennials in New York. Still, Amazon in the Jungle pushes deeper into the world of classical music than the HBO series Girls does with screenwriting or the film Francis Ha does with modern dance.
Gael Garcia Bernal is best known for his action adventure characters like young Che Guevara in Motorcycle Diaries or the jealous brother in Amores Perros . While Garcia’s character Rodrigo de Souza isn’t a violent revolutionary or a vicious gangster, he’s a conflicted rebel in his own right.
The young Latino conductor teeters to stay in control in a world of powered privilege and stuffy tradition, his character not unlike real-life L.A. philharmonic conductor Gustavo Adolfo Dudamel Ramírez. In the first season, his passionate violin-ripping ex proves how that passion can burn out.
Approached with an open mind, Mozart in the Jungle provides an angle for a younger generation to appreciated the collective wealth of the Western musical tradition. Garcia says that some of the conducting scenes were the most nervous he’s ever been. How does he deal with such moments?
“Mezcal,” he told Entertainment Weekly, talking about how he calmed himself down ahead of a scene where conducted an actual orchestra in front of a packed crowd. In a town dedicated to creating new culture at the expense of the classics Garcia has offered a brought to life a character who embraces both, inspiring us to embrace them as well.
If the prospect of watching a show about classical music makes your pop-culture brain nervous, in there’s always the old-culture remedy, mezcal.
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