The shadow of the law It is undoubtedly an anomaly within Spanish cinema. Directed by Dani de la Torre, The film tells the arrival of a police officer in Barcelona in the 1920s., Aníbal Uriarte (Luis Tosar) to solve a crime: the theft of a shipment of army weapons by a group of anarchists. That is, at least, what local police suspect. But, as its director comments in this interview, The shadow of the lawwants to be more than a thriller gangsters. It is the reflection of a turbulent time in our country. A moment of awakening to civilization, to the development of modern cities, of the cabaret shows where, on the other hand, The confrontation between the old business bourgeoisie and a working class that was beginning to awaken to the need to assert its rights and freedoms is about to explode. In that Barcelona between the wars, Uriarte will find a world in flux full of characters of very different conditions: the corrupt police, the unscrupulous pimp, the revolutionary, etc. black gender, a very peculiar historical moment, Social and political intrigues are the condiments of a cocktail, as we said, very rare in our cinema. G. LEÓN
Who of gangsters, a very unusual genre in Spain. What prompted you to make this film??
Bueno, a little bit that. That's the starting point. When they sent me the script for the movie I said: ostia, this is a movie gangsters. Then I began to document myself and read and delve into the photographs of the time., in the footage from the 1920s, to read novels, to become interested in stories about gunmanism and all the movement that existed in Barcelona in the 20. And the truth is that I saw a world that had never been photographed before, a Barcelona that was opening, a city to which thousands of emigrants came looking for their place. fashion arrived, the cars arrived, the trams arrived, opened to many cultural explosions, modernism arrived, people claimed that leisure too, los music halls,the drugs, the debauchery. Somehow people began to demand to live well. What's happening? Well, it was the first time that the people in power began to revolt., the masses began to demand labor rights, social rights, women demanded suffrage, there were movements of all kinds. This led to repression.. The groups in power were not used to these revolutions and tried to appease them with violence.. It also happened that the press burst in those years, the newspapers began to be read, governments were forced to give explanations for the things they were doing as, For example, the war against the moroccans, in which many young people were dying and it was an economic disaster for the country. The bosses hired hired gunmen to attack the union members to calm down the spirits and, somehow, keep the population in line. But it wasn't enough. There was more and more violence, There was more and more repression and that led to what led to, in a coup d'état. It was a preamble to what happened next..
One thing I liked about your film is that you have made an attempt to find an aesthetic, to create a mythology within the genre. It's in the plans, in the way you approach the plot.
Yeah, what I wanted was to show that light, showing those big stages. Showing a big city where people were looking for opportunities, like our New York or our Chicago. Our Americas were Barcelona, also Madrid and the Basque Country, Bilbao that, then, They were the industrial reference cities. Everyone was going to look for an opportunity there: gallegos, Extremadurans, andalusians, etc. What's happening? That that brought progress, money and money buys luxury. There are great avenues, the cars arrive, The electric light arrives and invades absolutely everything., the signs were neon, that until now had not been seen. So, People from the villages came to the cities and saw that display and it was like being in a theme park., like las vegas. And that was what I wanted to show. In our cinema the dark part has always been told a lot, the sewers, a little the Reeds and mud, looking for small stories in some villages or in a super-seedy part of the city. I wanted to get out of that. I wanted to show a way of seeing an era that had not yet been done. We all know the twenties from the photos, but it was a spectacular explosion of color. The fashions, the suits, everything was pure aesthetics.
I don't know what your references have been, but while I was watching her, I thought of Pekinpah, not Eastwood.
Yeah, Sergio Leone, Brian de Palma. Yeah, those are my cinephile references. What I wanted was not to get too far from them.. Don't do something super-personal or something super-underground or super-modern. Maybe where I distance myself from them is in violence., where I try to get closer to Greengrass, that wave, and make it narratively more modern. More like action movies are now, with the very mobile camera, attached to the character, and with a lot of vibration. Maybe that's where I'm leaving the classic narrative., oh well, It's a bit to show all that rawness. The viewer is used to being shown a little in motion. There are the two style mixes.
I wanted you to tell me a little about Tosar's character., which is fundamental in the film. He reminded me of Eastwood from pale rider.
As is. The reference was that. It was looking for the western, to the cowboy who arrives as one of his last missions to a city and has to solve something. We don't know if it will solve it or not., but you know that many people are going to die (laughter).
(Laughter)
So that epic is what we were looking for and, somehow, It is the one that also attracted Tosar when taking on the character because he wanted to play a character that didn't talk much., that said a lot with its look and that it was a type of action, very physical, very violent, that would fix things by hell. and I think that, bueno, It is one of the great virtues of the movie, that the main character was like enigmatic, who doesn't know very well what he's doing, what does he play and what, somehow, out our eyes in the movie, more than his words, what it says. I like it a lot.
I wanted to highlight how well constructed the script is., how well strung the plots are.
Yeah, the handicap that this movie has, for better or worse, what people highlight or don't like (because I have heard of everything) There are many characters and there are many plots.. There is the factory, there are the gangsters, there is the music hall, there are the politicians, It's very coral. So, sometimes there are people who, how it has so many open fronts, There are some that satisfy you and others that not so much.. We are used to stories of prohibition, For example. The plots of American movies generally come from there, smuggling, The power, the deception, Hate, Road to perdition,etc. Here we do not start from the dry law, part of a social conflict. Of a conflict that arises from a small group that wants to dominate everyone else, and all the little groups that come out and how they make fun of each other. Here a political context comes into play that in the films of gangstersgenerally does not fit, as the issue of the workers and their demands, the strikes, anarchism, the fronts that were between them... those things that take the film more towards the side of Novecentoque hacia una peli de gangsters al uso. Pero yo creo que era muy interesante porque también estamos contando una historia de nuestro país. Era algo que sucedió aquí. Y seguimos arrastrando esa mierda. Me apetecía hacer una película que tuviera arraigo sociopolítico, que tuviera esa lectura, que la viera gente joven y dijera, but, ¿aquí hubo esta peña?, no inventarme cuatro personajes que se pegarán cuatro tiros en un music hall. Quería que tuviera algo más, ver de dónde venimos, ver que esos problemas vienen de esa época y que no se arreglaron.
La película te remite al ahora al plantear esa confrontación. On the one hand, están los revolucionarios y por otro los conservadores.
Y luego son todos unos hijos de puta.
Are we still not clear?
Yeah, that's what happens. I think there is a group that tries to shout louder than the other group and no one hears themselves.. There are only two honest or seeking characters, apart from Tosar's character who wanders between two worlds trying to make a place for himself, do things right. They are the character of the police chief, the commissioner, and on the other hand the character of Salvador, the unionist. They are the characters who see everything coming, They have already been there and are trying to fix it as soon as possible., but when you face people who are not willing to do it or people who self-interestedly prefer conflict, you end up in conflict. These two worlds are shown here, those two Spains that are completely opposed. What I like about all this was that the political goals were just smoke screens., that behind all the flags there are always interests. Bueno, somehow that is something we are constantly seeing in the press. I didn't want to do politics, I wanted to make human stories and, somehow, These characters appeal to their primary instincts. I don't want to lose power and the one who bothers me, die. Point. And vice versa: I have to touch noses to get where I want to go. Many of the problems we have today come from there.. And it comes because they were not heard and continue not to be heard..
Your movie seemed to me to be a tribute to those who stay in the middle, those who are going to suffer the consequences of interests that do not concern them, but they are going to pay. They are the heroes.
Yeah, They are the ones who try to change things. They try to be respected. Here it happens that all the characters, somehow, It's not that they are all bad, is that they force each other to be bad. They have to defend themselves, some being violent or others being bastards or others being dark and manipulative, as the character of the Baron, For example, who wants to know everyone's secrets so he can use them and dominate people. It was a world of bastards in which everyone had to be a bigger bastard than the other to survive.. And I think that those who suffered the most were women.. At that time they were very big battles because they had no right to anything at all.. What remains of all this is the power of some over others.
Another thing that I wanted you to tell us about and that stands out about the film is the historical reconstruction part.. What has been the most complicated and the most pleasant part of this job??
It was one of the handicaps that I had. When I read the script I spoke to the producers and told them, look what I want to do is a big movie. This movie asks to be a big production movie, If we can't do it, it's better that we don't do it.. I want to open the plans, I want to see the streets, I want to see the cars, I want to see a lot of people, At that time there were many people in the streets, everywhere. So, Of course, was my main concern. But when I met Felix Bergés- The Ranchito (Game of Thrones) of digital, It calmed me down a lot. So, we work a lot on natural decorations, but with a lot of digital insert. Nowadays, in Spain we are at a high level. We still need to improve to reach the Americans, but it's a matter of time and money. Working for a year on a digital film is not the same as working for three months., like us. But I am very happy, one of the biggest challenges was achieving that level of production.
Tell me about the plan of the Sagrada Familia.
Ah, Yeah (laughter) Well look, that's a mix of real scenarios., (The environment where we recorded it was a kind of gravel pit that was under construction.), and 3D. It was taken from a photo of the time, of 1917, and we rebuild it the same. It's CGI work, pure and simple 3D work.
If each film is a world, what has it brought you, What good has it been for you?, as a professional, this film with respect to your first feature, The unknown?
Bueno, It has been an important leap for me. Making a period film is always an important leap. Getting out of a movie like this unscathed is complicated., I already knew where I was getting into, I knew it was difficult. Then, make a movie gangsters, the first, Well now you get into another mess and, on, If they compare you with the Americans, Well even more. I am very satisfied with the result. Obviously everything can be improved and everything is open to opinion and there will be people who like it and people who don't., because that's why we make movies. If they give to the big ones, imagine me. What I wanted was to make this film because I think we are at a time when we have to take a step. On one side, they give us firewood, and on the other hand we complain that only comedies are made. I think it's good to make comedies and it's good to make all kinds of movies., but I think we also have to explore new genres. What I have done is open a door. Maybe now another director comes and does something else different at that time and it's amazing.. What we don't have is to close ourselves, we have to do more genres, open up more, make thriller, comedies, obviously dramas, arthouse films, more indie and experimental, of course. But we also have to go there, we have to go to enterteinment, we have to do terror, Science fiction, tell our great period stories. I believe that people deserve to be told about their past., your future. I believe that technology allows all that.. To win you have to take risks.
Are the production conditions in place for this??
I think so. The technical conditions are in place to do things like this.. But the thing is that we are in a very bad moment. We are always complaining, but we are in a very complicated moment. Bad for theater cinema, good for audiovisual production because there are more and more platforms, there are more and more series, audiovisual contents are increasingly demanded. I think we are in a moment of transition in which people have Netflix, HBO, several platforms to choose from, so many genres are suffering from it. I think that average movies, like ours, is suffering, thrillers tipo The boy, Cell 211, these thrillers that used to work, now they work very little, in fact, because they are movies that are provided by serial platforms. That's why comedies stand out, because comedy in Spain has always had a large audience. It is worrying for certain genres because producers will risk less, They will go more to comedy which is a safe value, and fewer genres will be explored, but I think we have to continue making films of all kinds, and try to get the viewer to leave their house and go out to the living room. But, place.
