Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
I’m going to write my own review for 800 BALAS, which I thought was just exceptional. For now, though, I’m going to give the floor to today’s (justifiably) excited reviewer:
Hey Harry,
I caught the following films at the Egyptian, and felt the need to write you about them since they are both excellent. I got a cinematheque membership for Christmas (great present!), and have been there as often as possible since then but I didn't figure your readers would be interested in hearing about the Dye Transfer screening of the marvelous Ten Commandments (I'll never watch this on home video again!), or the final showing of what is probably the only nitrate Dye Transfer print of the incomparable The Red Shoes. Anyway both of these films are part of the 10 annual Recent Spanish Cinema Festival going on for the next two weeks there. And hopefully this won't get buried at the bottom of fifteen other updates like my last review of Only the Strong Survive.
Los Lunes Al Sol (Mondays in the Sun)
Los Lunes al Sol is the haunting, charming, and realistic story of a group of 40-60 year old guys who had worked in a shipyard but were laid off two years previously. They’re old, out of shape and unable to find work in a modern world—a world where companies want to higher fresh college kids and the words “20-35” are on every want ad. It’s a world of poverty and welfare, of camaraderie and alcoholism, of people who struggle to go on living in a world that no longer makes sense. This is also the story of my Dad.
My Dad has nothing to do with the real life workers who inspired this story, but he’s just the same—the only difference is that he lives in America, a place where even when it’s down the economy is strong enough that companies will still hire him. My Dad’s a salesman who has a knack for being in the wrong job at the wrong time, in a four year period he held 6 or 8 jobs, I can’t even remember any more. Last year my family was evicted in November because my Dad had been suddenly laid off (he was making more commission than the company could afford to pay) in July and was out of work for 6 weeks, bills piled up, became past due, fines were levied, and finally—literally a week before we would have paid up the house payment—the mortgage company decided to give us the Christmas present that my family had to be out of the house by January.
This beautiful film hit home for me. It’s an incredible and loving portrait of people intellectuals sneer at. It would be easy for critics to call these characters losers and loafers, lay-abouts or ignorant buffoons, and apparently they have, because the director felt the need to tell us before the screening that they are not losers, and he thinks they are heroes—I agree. About Schmidt was so successful with the critics because it purported the popular coastal lie of how menial and banal mid-west existence is, or how stupid and annoying the people there are, and never respected any of its characters. I mean, for chrissake, it’s a film where we’re supposed to dislike a main character because he sells waterbeds and has bad hair—therefore he’s a near worthless human. Los Lunes al Sol is the anti-About Schmidt; it’s a film that has intense respect and admiration for some people that life has been almost nothing but cruel to.
The focus of the film is Santa, played by the absolutely incredible Javier Bardem. He gained a lot of weight for the film, and as the director said, “with this film I destroyed his sex symbol status.” Imagine if the Tom Cruise character in Vanilla Sky weighed two hundred pounds, and Cruise had legitimately gained weight until he was two hundred pounds. That’s the equivalent that Bardem has done for this film. It’s an incredible performance; Santa is a brash and outrageous character who is immensely likable and magnetic. He’s on his last appeal for breaking a company street lamp during the sit-in/riot he organized before the plant closed. He refuses to pay the 8000 pesetas to replace the lamp because, one he doesn’t have the money, and two it was an ugly lamp anyway. He’s also a woman charmer. He can get almost any woman he wants, he knows the way to their hearts—how to woo and charm them. One of the best scenes of the film is when he meets Ãngela at the supermarket. He’s like Wednesday in Neil Gaiman’s brilliant American Gods. Fat guy, or no, women still can’t resist his wiles. There’s another moment in the film when Santa takes Amador home, and sees what his life is like that is simply revelatory; it is an incredible piece of acting and filmmaking. Santa sees what could happen to him, to any of them, with frightening ease.
The other main character is Jose and his wife Ana (I believe). Jose was also fired from the shipyard when they closed it down. Ana works in a tuna packing plant and comes home stinking of fish. Jose loves her intensely, but he’s even more angry at himself and angry at the world that has reduced him to relying on his wife for support. He thinks people laugh at him, that they think he’s a good-for-nothing loafer. Ana isn’t so sure she still loves Jose, she’s thinking of leaving him, she hates her job—the menial harsh labor and long hours for a pittance wage—but it’s the best job she can manage to get. This story is truly heartbreaking, and for me was the emotional center of the film.
Then there is Paulino, or Lino. Lino’s a big man, he was one of the white collar workers at the plant, I believe, and he’s been trying for two years to get another job. Of all the characters he’s the one that tries the hardest, constantly trying to get a new job. He worries about his appearance, and he nervously sweats through all his interviews, and he’s every time he’s given the phrase “we’ll call you” with a half smile and quick dismissal—the calls never come, but he still believes one could. He has to rely on his teenage son to teach him how to use a computer and borrows his clothes to show he’s hip to modern styles. Lino’s the character, who reminded me most of my own Dad, a guy who has worked his ass off for his family, and won’t stop trying. I truly understand how Lino feels, I’ve heard my Dad complain many times that he gets paid less than a new college graduate because they have a degree and he only completed Jr. College—more the twenty years of experience and the ability to outsell them ten to one doesn’t matter as much as a meaningless piece of paper.
And there is Amador, the tragic victim of the mass firing. His wife has left him and he slips more and more into alcoholism. He lives for the time spent in their local bar, the closest thing to human companionship he has. I can’t say much about Amador, because it’s just too hard.
All these characters meet at a small local bar that is like a second family to them. The bar is the heart of the film, you really have to see it to understand, but it’s a character in the film as well.
The director and writer Fernando León de Aranoa was at the screening afterwards for a brief interview and then took questions from the audience. He spoke Spanish extremely quickly and I understood only snippets of what he said, so I was grateful for the translator they had available. Quite a lot of interesting things were mentioned, but I don’t remember most of them accurately enough to relay it. Javier Bardem agreed to play the role before his Oscar nomination came in. Once that came in he was offered many different roles by some very big name directors. Aranoa urged Javier to take one of those roles, although he still wanted Javier to play Santa but he hadn’t written the role expressly for him. Javier eventually decided to read the scripts and take the one he liked best. Los Lunes Al Sol was his choice. The title comes from the real life workers who were laid off from the shipyard. They took to calling themselves ‘Los Lunes al Sol’ as a way of calling themselves unemployed but without all the baggage that goes with that word. It was a phrase that united them together so they would be strong and survive. Aranoa cobbled the film together from his personal experiences with the real life counterparts, stories he’s heard, and stories his friends have heard. He also was at the sit in they held to protest the shipyard’s closing, and locked himself in with the workers.
In all it was an extremely satisfying kick start to the Recent Spanish Cinema Festival. I haven’t yet seen Hable con Ella but I will say that Los Lunes al Sol certainly deserves all the awards it has gotten.
800 Balas (800 Bullets)
Let me get this off my chest right away (and I’m not a swearing type), HOLY FUCK, RETURN OF THE KING IS GOING TO HAVE TO KICK MY ASS TO BE THE BEST FILM OF THE YEAR! It’s a very rare occurrence that you see the best film of the year in February, and it’s going to take one hell of a film to get me to budge away from this as the number one film of 2003. Personally I don’t think Return of the King can do it for me, because the Scouring of the Shire is my favorite part of the novel, and I think that for what is essentially a 9 to 11 hour epic you need the long denouement it would provide; not to mention how essential it is thematically. But I also trust PJ and wouldn’t be surprised if ROTK is much better than I’m hoping. But yes, this i! s one of the best films of the year. Harry was absolutely right to put this in his top 5.
What breaks my heart is that I probably will not be able to see this again in theaters. Right now my reaction is to grab my girlfriend and all my buddies and drag their asses to a screening, to pay their way if necessary. I also want to see this another two or three times, at least, in the theater. But I probably won’t ever get that chance because American distributors are spineless idiots and will be scared to pick up the film because of two harmless moments. One is a brief and asexual moment of full frontal female nudity. This could probably be cut, but it loses a nice character moment for JulÃan (the main character). The other involves the boy Carlos and the same hooker, and is probably the most charming and drop-dead funny! scene in the film—it would be a cinematic crime to cut that scene but it is what the censors and Christian fanatics here in America would demand. Taking a scene that is cute and utterly harmless totally out of context. They would undoubtedly call the scene pedophilic or pornographic when it is absolutely, and without question, neither.
Anyway, on to the film. 800 Balas is about a boy searching for his grandfather (as Harry succinctly put it). The film opens with an absolutely wonderful opening credits sequence that is original and nostalgic with a style all its own (like the rest of the film). The next sequence is classic western, but it goes horribly wrong and haunts everyone later in the film. We next pick up the story of Laura, her mother-in-law, and her son Carlos who are moving into a new house. Carlos is a charming kid who likes to throw water balloons of paint onto the movers, fire his toy gun at them, and shout out fun-loving phrases like “Viva Islam!” In a brilliant move, we first see his face after he opens one of his mother’s boxes and sees a picture of his father for the first time.
Carlos and his mother fight over the picture and he sneaks down later to look again. His grandmother comes up behind him and tells him that his father and grandfather were stunt men for the spaghetti westerns, and that his father died in a horrible accident. She also mentions his grandfather is still alive and probably drunk somewhere in AlmerÃa. Carlos is then shipped off to ski camp, and his worried mother hands him a cell phone, his grandma gives him some spending money, then his mom gives him a VISA card, “for emergencies.” Carlos is about 10-12, by the way. Carlos of course slips off, calls a cab and goes to AlmerÃa to meet his grandfather.
Everything up to now has been wonderful, but when Carlos gets to Texas Hollywood the film ignites into high gear and doesn’t let up. This is not a comedy-western; it’s not a straight western or an action-western. It is much more than that. It’s a film full of heart and soul, about past regrets and future uncertainty. It’s about family and relationships, about facing your fears and owning up to the past. It’s about truth and lies, sex and beer, losers and heroes. And it’s about Clint Eastwood. The script is perfect, the performances are extraordinary, the film is beautifully shot, wonderfully cast, an! d executed with an exquisite perfection. Dear God, there is so much greatness in this film that it is simply and utterly unbelievable. I can’t begin to pick a favorite moment, there are so many, and each moment could be a new favorite moment. But needless to say, when Carlos has his shining moment as “the Kid” I cheered, I couldn’t help myself it was absolutely too perfect, and exactly what I’d been wanting and waiting for.
I could go into detail on this film like I did for Los Lunes al Sol, but I don’t really want to, I don’t want to spoil any more than I’ve already spoiled, because I wish that everyone could get the chance to see this film. And this is not a film where you can go into long discussions about each character. Each characterization and relationship is so fragile and beautiful that I don’t want to take the chance of mishandling it by trying to put it into mere words—the film expresses things that you CANNOT verbalize, or if they could be, they shouldn’t be. However, very briefly, the film is about the men that were stunt doubles for the Spaghetti Westerns shot in the 60s and 70s and are now living on the sets that were leftover—putting on shows for tourists.
Ãlex de la Iglesia does an incredible directing job; I want to see everything else he’s made now. I can easily say that this film is better directed than Los Lunes al Sol which was an outstanding piece of direction in itself. Comparing the two is like comparing Lord of the Rings with Gosford Park, very different styles but both absolutely excellent. Harry once again nailed it when he called Ig! lesia Spain’s Peter Jackson, because that’s absolutely right. He was also there afterwards for a Q and A. Unfortunately I didn’t get picked to ask a question about American release and possible censorship, and the questions that were asked weren’t quite as good as the previous night (and Iglesia talked so much I hardly remember his extensive enthusiastic answers, much less the questions). Iglesia spoke much clearer Spanish (and better English), and I was able to understand much of it, and got most of his jokes (he is extremely funny, and had the audience rolling). One thing that endeared him forever to me is that he said something along the lines of (note that quote probably wholly inaccurate as it is from memory), “In Europe we have no money, so we try to make up for it with genius and talent. The result is that we have almost no stupid films; I’m trying to make stupid films. It’s a European Problem.” So then someone asked him a question along the lines of if he is making stupid films how does he compete with all the stupid American films being released in Europe. Iglesia then blasted this guy. He said that he can call his films stupid because he made them and is a very humble person, but he does not think they are stupid and doesn’t like it at all when other people call them stupid. The man reminded me a great deal of Kevin Smith. Oh and the other thing is that like Los Lunes al Sol this is based on real life, or as Iglesia put it “the losers in southern Spain that put these shows on for stupid German tourists.”
I can’t think of much more to say other than that everyone should attempt to see this film, even if you have to kill someone (well maybe you don’t need to go quite that far).
Returning back to the Hive,
Hellstrom
Hey, if it helps, Hellstrom, I asked Iglesia about American distribution right after the event, and he told me that it has not been picked up yet, although it’s being shown to a lot of distributors for the first time at this week’s ongoing AFM. When I asked him if he anticipated any censorship troubles with the scene you mentioned above, he said it hadn’t really become an issue. Yet.
Nice work on the article. Thanks.
"Moriarty" out.
