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serai.
Tonight I went with my dad to the American Cinematheque presentation of Alatriste, Viggo Mortensen's newest film. (Just so you know, my father NEVER goes to the movies, but being a Spaniard, he was very interested in seeing this one.) As part of the presentation, Viggo was there along with his co-star, Unax Ugalde, who plays Alatriste's ward, Iñigo Balboa. (Cute guy, if you like Spaniards.)
For those of you who don't know, the script was pieced together from several of the Alatriste books, novels about a dashing seventeenth-century warrior/lover named Diego Alatriste y Tenorio (a guy rather along the lines of Richard Sharpe), through whose life the reader learns about and gets to experience the wars and history of this period in Spain, when the country was basically the world superpower. At the Q&A Viggo and Unax gave after the film, Viggo compared the books to LOTR, in terms of their scope and the fanatic attachment that many, many people in Spain have to them. He said it was fully as daunting a challenge to portray this guy as it was to portray Aragorn, in that there was such a high level of expectation as well as entrenched reader ideas about who he was and how he should be played.
The film itself is extraordinary. Pretty much the biggest film ever to come out of Spain, in terms of budget and production realities, it is clearly something very special. Exhaustively researched, with amazing production design and cinematography, and the acting and direction are truly magnificent. Like LOTR, the film is lovingly layered with minute attention to detail, but unlike LOTR, the filmmakers were very lucky in that most of the locations still exist in their original form. (Spain is filled with historic buildings and sites that only need small bits of makeover and cleanup - getting rid of things like cars and such - to look exactly as they did back in the day. I remember my dad pointing to a grand old building in Seville and telling me that it was the Tabacalera - one of the locations of the opera Carmen, which is set in the 1700's.)
The story is an episodic tale about Alatriste, who is a soldier when his country needs him and a sword-for-hire when it doesn't. Early in the film, he makes a promise to a dying comrade to take his son as a ward, and so we're introduced to Iñigo (who is not obsessed with avenging his father, just in case you were wondering). Alatriste occasionally carries on with a famous actress, gets into a lot of duels, keeps getting arrested by the Inquisition and then released, and kills a lot of people. (Men, actually. He's not the kind of guy to kill women.) Tons of court intrigue, double-crossing, broken hearts, etc. Iñigo keeps trying to have an affair with a high-born girl who keeps changing her mind about whether or not she'll run away with him. And on it goes, until the Great and Glorious Finale. It's that kind of movie, and a very well-done example of it, in my opinion.
It's also, as I said, historically accurate down to the details. As an example, in the very first scene we learn that soldiers on stealth raids would wear coils of thick wired rope around their wrists, the end of which would be lit, the soldier occasionally blowing on it to keep the coal glowing, so that fire was always at hand to use for things like lighting fuses and such. (Stuff like that really makes a historical film, I think.) I was also impressed, especially so, with how painterly the film is. There are a great many shots that look exactly like paintings of 17th century Spain, especially Velasquez and El Greco. There was some Rembrandt in there too, in the use of light, and the occasional touch of Vermeer. (I look forward to capping the DVD!) Viggo sported an impressive moustache as well as a lot of scars, and looked the part of the virile yet battle-weary guerrero. (And yay, he was definitely the sex object here. In the few actual bedroom scenes he had, he was the one with his shirt off, not the gal!)
He did not, however, sound the part. I imagine it won't be a problem for anyone who doesn't speak Spanish, but my dad and I compared notes afterward, and we both agreed that he definitely had trouble with the accent. He was clearly the only non-Spaniard on the set, and it stands out. Also, that scrapy mumbly thing of his was a distraction as well, as Spanish actors on the whole tend to enunciate pretty clearly, especially when they're working in a period piece like this one. But as far as the actual acting, he was great. Lots of hot-headed passion, which surprised me since he's so diffident when he's acting in English, and some very amusing examples of what I call "facial jokes", i.e., little smirks or head-bobs or eyerolls used as substitutes for actual words. He can be quite funny when he's of a mind.
A note for film fanatics: Bob Anderson, who was Errol Flynn's sword teacher, and has been a swordmaster in Hollywood for over fifty years, worked on this film. Viggo was instrumental in getting him, apparently, after they'd worked together on LOTR, and his hand is obvious in the fight scenes here. The thing about making a realistic film that uses swordplay is understanding that real sword fights are not choreographed ballets of fancy moves - what Anderson contemptuously calls "sword-slapping". (Viggo quoted that at the the talk, and it got quite a laugh.) They tend to be fast and brutal, because after all, you're talking about two guys trying to kill each other with what are essentially big fucking knives. And that's how you can always tell Anderson's work - his fights are very real. Sharp, hard, fast. Nothing cutesy or delicate about them. Lots of dirty tricks and going for the gut, as would be true in reality when your life is on the line and you only care about being the one left standing. Yeah, this film is bloody, but the honesty of the sword work makes it seem more violent than it actually is - there really aren't that many actual fight scenes compared to an American film (300, I'm glaring at your silly comic-book ass), and Unax pointed out later that a number of beautifully filmed fights were actually taken out by the director because he wanted the film to be more a character piece than an action movie.
A grand film, all in all, and well worth seeing. It hasn't yet gotten distribution in the States, although it is opening well in South and Central America, where there is great anticipation for it, and Viggo opined that it might make it into the US through the back door of the Latin market. I certainly hope so, because this is a film that really should be seen on the big screen. It's the first real epic film to come out of Spanish cinema, and deserves to be seen in that context. I hope you all will get a chance to enjoy it one day.
Tonight I went with my dad to the American Cinematheque presentation of Alatriste, Viggo Mortensen's newest film. (Just so you know, my father NEVER goes to the movies, but being a Spaniard, he was very interested in seeing this one.) As part of the presentation, Viggo was there along with his co-star, Unax Ugalde, who plays Alatriste's ward, Iñigo Balboa. (Cute guy, if you like Spaniards.)
For those of you who don't know, the script was pieced together from several of the Alatriste books, novels about a dashing seventeenth-century warrior/lover named Diego Alatriste y Tenorio (a guy rather along the lines of Richard Sharpe), through whose life the reader learns about and gets to experience the wars and history of this period in Spain, when the country was basically the world superpower. At the Q&A Viggo and Unax gave after the film, Viggo compared the books to LOTR, in terms of their scope and the fanatic attachment that many, many people in Spain have to them. He said it was fully as daunting a challenge to portray this guy as it was to portray Aragorn, in that there was such a high level of expectation as well as entrenched reader ideas about who he was and how he should be played.
The film itself is extraordinary. Pretty much the biggest film ever to come out of Spain, in terms of budget and production realities, it is clearly something very special. Exhaustively researched, with amazing production design and cinematography, and the acting and direction are truly magnificent. Like LOTR, the film is lovingly layered with minute attention to detail, but unlike LOTR, the filmmakers were very lucky in that most of the locations still exist in their original form. (Spain is filled with historic buildings and sites that only need small bits of makeover and cleanup - getting rid of things like cars and such - to look exactly as they did back in the day. I remember my dad pointing to a grand old building in Seville and telling me that it was the Tabacalera - one of the locations of the opera Carmen, which is set in the 1700's.)
The story is an episodic tale about Alatriste, who is a soldier when his country needs him and a sword-for-hire when it doesn't. Early in the film, he makes a promise to a dying comrade to take his son as a ward, and so we're introduced to Iñigo (who is not obsessed with avenging his father, just in case you were wondering). Alatriste occasionally carries on with a famous actress, gets into a lot of duels, keeps getting arrested by the Inquisition and then released, and kills a lot of people. (Men, actually. He's not the kind of guy to kill women.) Tons of court intrigue, double-crossing, broken hearts, etc. Iñigo keeps trying to have an affair with a high-born girl who keeps changing her mind about whether or not she'll run away with him. And on it goes, until the Great and Glorious Finale. It's that kind of movie, and a very well-done example of it, in my opinion.
It's also, as I said, historically accurate down to the details. As an example, in the very first scene we learn that soldiers on stealth raids would wear coils of thick wired rope around their wrists, the end of which would be lit, the soldier occasionally blowing on it to keep the coal glowing, so that fire was always at hand to use for things like lighting fuses and such. (Stuff like that really makes a historical film, I think.) I was also impressed, especially so, with how painterly the film is. There are a great many shots that look exactly like paintings of 17th century Spain, especially Velasquez and El Greco. There was some Rembrandt in there too, in the use of light, and the occasional touch of Vermeer. (I look forward to capping the DVD!) Viggo sported an impressive moustache as well as a lot of scars, and looked the part of the virile yet battle-weary guerrero. (And yay, he was definitely the sex object here. In the few actual bedroom scenes he had, he was the one with his shirt off, not the gal!)
He did not, however, sound the part. I imagine it won't be a problem for anyone who doesn't speak Spanish, but my dad and I compared notes afterward, and we both agreed that he definitely had trouble with the accent. He was clearly the only non-Spaniard on the set, and it stands out. Also, that scrapy mumbly thing of his was a distraction as well, as Spanish actors on the whole tend to enunciate pretty clearly, especially when they're working in a period piece like this one. But as far as the actual acting, he was great. Lots of hot-headed passion, which surprised me since he's so diffident when he's acting in English, and some very amusing examples of what I call "facial jokes", i.e., little smirks or head-bobs or eyerolls used as substitutes for actual words. He can be quite funny when he's of a mind.
A note for film fanatics: Bob Anderson, who was Errol Flynn's sword teacher, and has been a swordmaster in Hollywood for over fifty years, worked on this film. Viggo was instrumental in getting him, apparently, after they'd worked together on LOTR, and his hand is obvious in the fight scenes here. The thing about making a realistic film that uses swordplay is understanding that real sword fights are not choreographed ballets of fancy moves - what Anderson contemptuously calls "sword-slapping". (Viggo quoted that at the the talk, and it got quite a laugh.) They tend to be fast and brutal, because after all, you're talking about two guys trying to kill each other with what are essentially big fucking knives. And that's how you can always tell Anderson's work - his fights are very real. Sharp, hard, fast. Nothing cutesy or delicate about them. Lots of dirty tricks and going for the gut, as would be true in reality when your life is on the line and you only care about being the one left standing. Yeah, this film is bloody, but the honesty of the sword work makes it seem more violent than it actually is - there really aren't that many actual fight scenes compared to an American film (300, I'm glaring at your silly comic-book ass), and Unax pointed out later that a number of beautifully filmed fights were actually taken out by the director because he wanted the film to be more a character piece than an action movie.
A grand film, all in all, and well worth seeing. It hasn't yet gotten distribution in the States, although it is opening well in South and Central America, where there is great anticipation for it, and Viggo opined that it might make it into the US through the back door of the Latin market. I certainly hope so, because this is a film that really should be seen on the big screen. It's the first real epic film to come out of Spanish cinema, and deserves to be seen in that context. I hope you all will get a chance to enjoy it one day.
