Andrés (Ricardo Gómez), A young policeman who has tanned in the toughest neighborhoods in Madrid, He arrives at a town on the Valencian coast to occupy a new position in a second -class police station. In that sun and beach place, It never seems that nothing particular happens. Compared to its previous destination, That looks like a spa. Even your new partner, to which Colombo is nicknamed sly (Pere Ponce), It does not seem too interested in moving a finger for anything. But Andrés's always alert looks will soon begin to discover that something is cooked in this paradise for retirees. After the walls of an apartment residence for retired Germans a very particular community is hidden, But discreet life. We are in the first moments of the newly established Spanish democracy. On the horizon the arrival of the first socialist government after Franco's death is expected. In those years, and enjoying the amparo and the protection offered by the previous regime, A group of old Nazi army officers walk without problems through the beaches of our lift.
We chat with Óscar aibar about The substitute, His sixth long work, That this Friday is presented in commercial rooms throughout the country. A film that has the support of RTVE and the à Punt autonomous chain and is a co-production between Tornasol and the Valencian Voramar Films.
How do you find this story?
There are two very clear points to start the project. One is ten years ago when I visit Calpe. I remember that I was in a small restaurant and I look at a wall full of photos of celebrities. Among these photos there was a smaller photo with about five or six uncles dresses from the Wehrmacht and the SS with hairstyles from the years 60. So, I ask the restaurant uncle if that photo was the filming of a movie, And he tells me: “no, no; That is the Germans of Denia who came here to celebrate the birthday of one of them ”. At that time Pandora's box opens to me. The second trigger with which I started the script was four years ago, When mosad roles are declassified and it is discovered that there were two operations in the Spanish Levante who had been frustrated, One of them by the Spanish National Police. This flies my head and I tell myself: "You have to do this script". That is when I decide to use the thriller structure that will help me tell this story.
Genre is becoming fashionable thriller In Spanish cinema. How do you see this trend?
There are many types of thriller. He thriller It is like him western contemporary. Has evolved in a very beautiful way since Fincher did Zodiac, Although I think the first thriller Modern is Blade Runner What is a science fiction movie, but what, In fact, It is a poly that is alone in danger. For me is the modern western. You already know that my first movie was a western. It is a genre that has always wanted to do.
Seeing your career in perspective, I would say you've never stayed still, that you have touched a lot of sticks.
Yeah, Because I like all the cinema. I believe that a director's style is impoverished if he is dedicated to a single genre. To me the genre that I like the most is comedy, I think it's the most difficult (In all my films I try to humor because I think people have to entertain), But the thriller It fascinates me, It consumes it a lot. I love crime programs, I am hooked to Crimes Catalán, The dark time, So I like to know who the murderer is and why he has killed in the end. That forward line that does not cease until it is discovered who has done it captivates me, That's why I wanted to make this movie. Without wanting to compare me, of course, I think there are filmmakers, Como Coppola or Scorsese, that have done all genres. The difficult thing is not to mistake you with the genre you use to tell the story you want to tell. I like all kinds of cinema. For me there are only two types of films: Good and bad. I consume them all and I would not like to limit myself to horror, For example, It would be very boring.
In The substitute has a magnificent script. I wanted to ask you how the construction process was.
He thriller What do I like is Only in danger Because it is the hero who does not want to be a hero, But that ends alone against the world, facing a reality that nobody wants to see. That is the hero's journey. When I start this movie, I tell myself: "I want it to be the hero's trip". But, Who is the hero in my movie? So, I have another moral conflict that is the same as all Spanish writers and directors when you want to embody a Spanish policeman, Because many times it falls into the topics, that is to say, that either they are good or all are very bad, etc. So, I try to get into the head of a secret police from the lead years and I decide for a guy. It was not an easy decision. He is a man who has committed, that have educated him to defend a cause, He is a policeman who begins his career in a fascist regime such as Franco and who lives a transition in which myths are falling around him. Everything they have taught him is collapsing and he has to take sides. That universe that collapses was for me the year 82 In Spain, in which, After fifty years of right -wing regime, suddenly, An alleged leftist game will come. That universe was an earthquake. For example, there was 200.000 Weapons licenses of paramilitary and parapolial organizations, fascist, Falangists, It was a very well structured fascism and those who lost war, who had been retaliated, They still didn't know if they could appear their heads, If everything was a lie or really. That Spain that I lived as a teenager seemed to me the ideal board to make that hero's trip, With all your conflicts and contradictions, What are the characters that I like.
In The substitute, The characters have a clear character that survives and evolves throughout the film. How was that construction of the arches? How was the construction work with the actors?
In the case of the two boys, Pere Ponce and Ricardo Gómez, I told you the following story. For me, human beings have that moment when we come to the world, What is childbirth, And then there is another event in life that is when a human being becomes a person, That cataclysm. Colombo is the father that the protagonist has never had, A character that is an alien; It has many values, He is a policeman, But not weapons, It is a disaster, a shot is shot in the foot (laughter), It is an intellectual, but, above all, is very good person. Andrés [Ricardo Gómez's character] Born with him as a person. Without speaking it, begins to have empathy with the feeling of others, That is something that there are many people who do not discover, But that is something to have to be a person. That is Colombo. What happens is that when Colombo gives the witness to Andrés, He dies and he stays orphan again. But he is already a person. That's what I said, in this movie, The Colombo Arc is the birth of a person.
The film raises very clearly where good and evil are. I have the impression that, lately, We are as reluctant to establish clear positions in front of things, But in your movie yes everything is very clear.
Bueno, The intrinsic evil. There is something that is the bad circumstantial, which is when life takes you to crime, For example. And then there is the intrinsic evil that is that "I'm going to shoot four hundred people". We are talking about these. There were many hidden Nazis in Spain, People who had been linked to the Nazi party and who had done deplorable acts during World War. We are talking about monsters. There are a list of one hundred five people claimed for crimes against humanity who had made authentic barbarities. People who had passed the circumstantial line to make authentic massacres. Mauthausen's doctor, Aribert Heim, He was a man who, as they say in the movie, All Spanish prisoners called him the banderillero because he loved to inject in his heart syringes with all kinds of things to see people die. Georg Bachmayer, who called the dog, I shot people for amusement. Anton Galler, that is buried in the Cemetery of Denia, He is an uncle who shot in Rome as two thousand people before retiring. Those people who were caught by Nazism and who ended in Spain were evil with capital letters, The real evil. And they were here. They were much more than a murderer, They were monsters.
What the film tells today seems so amazing that I think, If I had the opportunity, there will be some spectator who, Knowing this story, Maybe I ask you, Did these Nazis really walk so happily through our country?
There is a documentary that I advise everyone in Netflix and that has been on Spanish television until very recently called The most dangerous man in Europe About Otto Skorzeny who tells that this man was like a rock star. In the years 50, There was no Sarao in Madrid who was not invited. In Denia they walked as happily as I have an editorial of a newspaper of the time in which Bremmer, The owner of the apartments where the movie happens, He complained in the year sixty and that it was an injustice that, in the cinema, In war films, They were always the bad, And that that had to be changed (laughter). Notice if they were unpunished and they felt comfortable. Francoism and the immediate post-funism was for them a paradise. The most spooky thing is not that they feel proud, Because they were people who had been in World War II. Is that their children and grandchildren are proud of them. And they continue to talk about them and occupy important positions in banks in Spain and in Spanish industries of great weight.
Your film presents the arrival of the first socialist government with a point of hope, but, at the same time, It is intuited that things will not be fixed.
I leave that to the spectator. That it is the spectator to speak and say if he disappointed him the first leftist government in 50 years or not. There I do not get as an author and let it be the viewer who answers. That those who have historical vision, Those who live the time, do it. I have made this movie a lot about the twenty -year -old kids now, so that, suddenly, Seeing an entertaining movie they can say, “This happened here. In which world did we live four days ago?”.
Not to finish I do not resist asking you about the persecution scene with the Seat 127. It seemed fantastic.
¡And 127 With coffee color with milk!, which was the ugliest color in the world. I'm going to tell you what it means to me, as author, he 127. The persecution between a six -valve Mercedes and I do not know how many horses against that thing that was a four -wheeled motorcycle, That was a 127, For me it embodies that economic power of northern Europe against what southern Europe is, that is to say, Spain, Portugal, etc., that we are like the ass of Europe. Well, it was that, all the cylinders that represents the power of Mercedes against an uncle who drives very well, But that has a machine that does not arrive. (laughter)
