How did Miguel de Cervantes survive between 1575 and 1580, years in which he was imprisoned in Algiers? What footprint left in an aspiring 28 -year -old writer, who tried to escape unsuccessfully four times and that, unlike usual, he was not executed? Was he already in his head The Quijote? Faced with these questions Alejandro Amenábar (Santiago de Chile, 53 years old) has built The captive, that opens in Salas next Friday and that opens the conversation to multiple possibilities, including that the survival of that prisoner was due to a very special relationship between the Lord of Algiers, Hasán Bajá, a Venetian converted to Islam, and the captive of the title.
Amenábar responds by phone with its usual calm and meticulous mood, a few hours after flying to Toronto, where this Sunday is projected, at its festival, The captive. “The original idea had, eight years ago, my producer, Fernando Bovaira,” explains the filmmaker. “At a time of break in the financing of While the war lasts (His previous film), I started looking for another story. And Fernando told me about this period of Cervantes, who had a lot of adventures. It seemed a novel by Alejandro Dumas. I was hooked a lot, not only for the adventure part, but because of how important it is to understand the artist and the person. I thought it would be very interesting to raise a portrait of the person responsible for the most important novel or the most read of all time. The first modern novel. The project has been asleep for a long time, from time to time I took a look, and only flowed when I raised it as a movie and not as a television series. ”
Ask. This, like almost all his previous works, delves into the evil of fanaticism.
Answer. Probably. My concern for fanaticism was born since I have reason. I went to a religious school and studied Christian dogmas. My reason rebelled in an almost automatic way against dogma. In my work the concept of freedom is present, especially the intellectual, something that I have discovered later. In The captive It is in all layers: intellectual, artistic, physical and sexual freedom.
P. Do you worry that the reception and echo of a prison film, a drama of survival, end up devoured by a detail, which is the relationship between Cervantes and Hasán Bajá, the possibility of homosexual love?
R. It is soon to say that. I have tested the film with a real audience, the reaction was really good in all the strata of people. And at the same time, just as there was a good perception of The captive, I also perceived the feeling that I was going to generate controversy. I think my film can be a good thermometer to know if really if diversity and sexuality in our society is as normalized as we believe. Because obviously having homosexual or homosexual relationships, which came to call sodomy in the 16th century, was a problem. In fact, that’s why Miguel de Cervantes performs Information from Algiers, To be able to return safely and save Madrid. But in the 21st century in Spain it should not be a problem.
P. Fernando Arrabal said in his day that the condemnation of Cervantes in Madrid for which he fled to Naples before his participation in the battle of Lepanto was due to homosexual acts.
R. And there is no evidence to confirm that, starting with the same sentence, true, that does not mention it. Arrabal applied his imagination, something that I also claim in the film. The captive It is a film about imagination, about the power to tell stories. I also understand that it matters in what context or at what time you propose, although, I insist, in the 21st century in a society like Spanish this should not cause scandal. Paradoxically, in Algiers this film would cause a stir today, despite what in 1575 Cervantes had to do there when he went out. Surely his head exploded because he was opposite to the rigid and cold reality, even sad, of Castile.
P. When did you understand that the scheme of Arabian Nights did you fit in your script? Cervantes is a Sherezade who tells stories to save his life.
R. When I reread completely The Quijote. Like so many other Spaniards, I had read it, but I hadn’t really read it. That is, he had commented on the institute. In the first part of The Quijote The adventure of the captive is raised, a story that Cervantes probably met before writing El Quijote, And there is a lot of autobiographical element. When you assume that you are going to film part of the life of one of the best stories counters of all time, there is something that pushes you to pay tribute to the art of telling stories. And what makes Cervantes a legend is precisely Don Quijote of La Mancha, which was written decades later. I really liked to doubt the official history. Cervantes was in Algiers, and is there? No, look, let’s review some things because it cannot be that a man who tries to escape four times does not end up executed.
P. For decades the surroundings of Lorca, once killed, hid his homosexuality. Another official story.
R. It has to do with prejudice, so I say that this movie can be a good thermometer. I think that Cervantes, like Lorca, was a deeply empathic being, a being full of light, a fundamentally optimistic person, capable of embarking several of his companions into four escape attempts, and at some point he is seen with a man. Where is the problem? The answer has to do, more than with The captive, with whom he faces the movie. It is the public who completes the puzzle, I assumed when I launched to write the script that was going to explore what appeared as a hypothesis in many history books, and I did it with all the forcefulness that allows you to fiction. However, when people see the film, there is a part of the audience that believes that this relationship between captor and captive is reciprocal, and others think that Cervantes is letting themselves be wanted, because he has to save his life. It is a toxic relationship of abuse of power, and it is interesting how each one completes it in their own way.
P. And your opinion?
R. Now that I see that the public is complete in its own way, it almost seems ugly to manifest.
Wanting to tied and melancholicly to the past is a useless exercise, because time inexorably runs towards the future “
P. The film opens at a precise political moment in Spain.
R. I don’t want to generate a stir without more. I like to be very sincere, honest, with what I do, take my films to the last consequences, always taking into account that my respect for the viewer is sacred and I am very aware that my audience is transversal. That was seen in While the war lasts. In my own way of being moderate, I don’t like to place myself at the end. I seek to find, and I think this is quite Cervantino, the human side in the person in front.
P. And what does this movie contribute as a person?
R. I am more and more aware that making cinema is an exercise of expression in freedom and I thank you to be able to do it in the society in which I find myself. The captive It is a film about freedom at all levels, and today that is something that I put very value. On the other hand, I have not felt called to make autobiographical stories, regardless of whether the cinema entered my life, he turned me and saved me in many ways. However, in this movie, I have found a connection a posteriori And I have realized that this Cervantes in front of a lot of people telling stories is a film director, creates a link between the narrator and the listeners.
P. You are never complacent.
R. TRUE. I try to touch the issues that worry me until the last consequences. Here, if I had parked the theme of homoerotism between Cervantes and his captor, he would have been a mojigato for me and would have renounced myself; At the same time I am in mind that the public has to go to a room and pay an entrance for my movie. I want to give something in exchange for that effort. That something in return is the wrapping, a film that connects and excites.
P. Did you worry about historians’s response to their version of Cervantes?
R. I worried me more with While the war lasts, Because of its high political voltage and in which I wanted to have the guarantee that I could go out without people throwing me stones. In this case we are talking about facts of four centuries ago, and we have told, as a historical advisor, with José Manuel Lucía Megías, who has several theories about it, some even dismantling things raised on the screen. But we talk about probable or not probable, not impossible, and there is fiction. It seems to me that a relationship with its captor moves within the probable, with which there of course there is evidence that there were encounters, and with which it was sure to be spoken in Italian.
It seems to me that a relationship with its captor moves within the probable, with which there are certainly evidence that there were meetings “
P. Against an exaltation, in vogue and booming, of certain passs as untouchable and glorious totems, you contrast the grays.
R. In the United States, movement Make America Great Again It is clearly referring to a glorious past as fascism claimed in Italy or Nazism in Germany … and look how they ended. Looking at the past is interesting, at least for me as a filmmaker, to find keys, understand me and project about the future. However, wanting to tied atavically and melancholicly to the past, it is a useless exercise, because time inexorably runs towards the future.
