2023-10-21 22:09:53
Antonio de la Torre’s energy is contagious. It doesn’t matter that he has a marathon promotional day, that he has just eaten or that he has lost 20 kilos for his new film (Pilar Palomero’s new film, The flashes). His passion is demonstrated in every word, in every response and in every project. Barely 24 hours ago he was filming one of the highlights of his new film and at seven in the morning he was already in Valladolid to push and be at the opening of the Seminci festival – before its premiere on October 27 – with The movie tellerthe title starring and directed by Lone Scherfig.
A project that has the signature of Isabel Coixet (by whom the film was previously written) and Walter Salles in the script and that adapts the novel of the same name by Hernán Rivera Letelier about a working-class family in the 60s in the Atacama Desert, in Chili. A family so humble that only one member can afford to go to the movies. She will be a daughter who will reveal herself to be an excellent storyteller. Through her gaze her family will relive what she sees; and through her gaze the viewer will review the recent history of the country; the situation that led to Allende’s victory and also Pinochet’s coup d’état that ended the dreams of so many.
What was there in this film that called you, it seems that there is something in the recent history of Latin America – you also played Mujica in The night of 12 years– What’s your name?
Obviously it interests me a lot, and it is true that the topic of Chile interests me a lot, but to be honest the reason why I signed up for this project was because they called me from A Contracorriente and told me that there was a film in which I could do Chilean, directed by Lone Scherfig and Berenice Bejo. Honestly, it sounded like a very attractive project to me, really.
And then came the rest…
That is the honest answer. The other thing came later and it was a candy. Entering that world, investigating… I started watching Chilean films, the films of Patricio Guzmán, a person on the team left me the keys to a platform to watch Chilean cinema… And there I entered and there was a link. It’s incredible, and it happened to me when I made Mujica’s film. When I made the film he was familiar to me, I think the Évole interview had come out before and I had seen it, and once I got into the film I went to Uruguay four times and saw so much of him that it is inconceivable to me that as soon as I was born I didn’t already know everything about the Tupamaros.
And something similar happens to me with Chilean history. I knew about Pinochet, about Allende, but now I am aware and do another reading about what neoliberalism meant in Chile, what the Chicago school did. I entered a lot into the story and I realized that in an unconscious way that was also there to have accepted the film in an instinctive way. This film opened up the possibility for me to enter the Chilean world and this leads me, and here the journalist in me comes out again, to the fact that films already contribute more to me because of the experience they give me, than because of what I can contribute as an actor. My theory is that if you have that passion, something stays with the character. I’m not saying that the fact that you are very interested in Chile makes you a good actor, but I think it helps.
Reality is a point of view. Of what I have in the past, only what we tell and how it is told remains. There is no past, only the present exists, and the past is what we tell ourselves.
Antonio de la Torre — Actor
To complete, there is the timing, the film arrives when 50 years have passed since Pinochet’s coup d’état. Do you think the film has a reading in today’s world?
The most depressing reading of the present is not because of this film, but because of the escalation of the war between Israel and Hamas. Mujica said: “That human beings use violence as a resolution of conflict, for me it is still primitive”, and that for me is the worst, that deep down we are still there, we return to the same thing. Look who can win on Sunday in Argentina… For some reason we don’t learn. I see the theory very clearly, that it is true that then one thing is what you believe and another is reality. That is something that I am learning as an adult, but the reality is that I believe that, and I say this for Palestine, to put a focus right now, but just like in Ukraine, the only possible solution is peace. The only possible solution is to renounce violence.
On this first day at Seminci, their film, which talks about the power of telling stories, coincided with Green Border, a film that has shown the power of a film to change things in its country, Poland.
The key is the story. The US wins the war, understand me, it wins it militarily with the bomb in Japan, but it wins it when all the Hollywood cinema of the 50s and 60s begins, because of the impact that cinema has, and even more so at that time, as a means of mass communication. Win the war when the story wins. I know that these are very interview phrases, but Álvaro Brechner (director of The night of 12 years), and reality is a point of view. From what I experienced in the past, all that remains is what we tell and how it is told. There is no past, there is only the present, and the past is what we tell ourselves, or what we believe. The one we know now.
The film talks about that fascination with cinema, do you remember that founding experience as a film viewer?
Let’s see, I have three memories. The first, that memory of feeling that cinema sucks, is going to see the long version of Ben-Hur, a Bruce Lee double bill… these four-hour sessions at the Monumental cinema that was near the neighborhood and I was going with my mother and there was a cut between movies. That is a first phase, in the 70s, when I was a child. Then there is a second phase as a teenager going to see Grease, The Exorcist, movies from the 80s… queuing at three in the afternoon for the eight o’clock session; and the third, which for me is the one that really converted me to cinema and changed the way I see cinema, and that if I were Minister of Culture I would suppress dubbing, was when I went to see cinema in its original version with Alberto San Juan, in the Alphavilles and the Renoirs. There I started watching Czech films, Japanese films, Jim Jarmusch films…
Were you already friends with Alberto San Juan?
Yes, I met him on the first day of class. I am an actor because of him, we talked about being actors and then we signed up for Cristina Rota’s school when we finished our studies at 25 years old. But I really remember that time of a passion for cinema… cinema as a journey. I remember seeing The night of lights and fascinate and fall in love with Maribel Verdú, blue velvet, …And in the original version, as movies should be.
In the film the protagonist is the only one in the family who can pay for a ticket, but once she enters and the film starts, everyone who sits in the stalls is equal to each other. I don’t know if cinema is one of the most democratic experiences there is in that sense.
Yes, in fact I have an anecdote with the Duchess of Alba, may she rest in peace, which is that we were in a cinema in Seville and her cell phone rang, she got up and left. It’s an anecdote but yes, it’s true. And then, paraphrasing Umberto Eco, there is a phrase that said that there are as many books as there are readers, since there are as many films as there are viewers. Everyone has their own vision of the film, but it is true that yes, suddenly, we are all equal together.
#solution #peace #renounce #violence