A virus called Stalin has infected the US government-owned Psychobook program. To prevent it, the CIA will use two of its agents, Palmer and Gagano, who will have to virtually enter the program and save the situation. In one of the skirmishes, Gagano, played by Ethiopian actor Daniel Tadesee, suffers a brain coma. However, his consciousness has survived within the program. There he will have to face Stalin himself, to an African political leader who goes around dressed as Batman from the TV series. 60, and will know, no more no less, that Jesus Christ himself, on this occasion a boy with a hippie appearance who traffics in a green gelatin. All these elements, mixed with some eighties technology, as a result Jesus shows you the way to the highway, a bizarre cocktail that, with memorable sense of humor, It refers us to the tapes of spies and conspiracies, Tom Clancy novels or a strange James Bond parody.
Everything in this film is presented to us in a disrupted and casual way., but it makes more sense than it seems. This is the world of Miguel Llansó, Madrid director, Today settled in Estonia, who already attracted powerful attention with his first feature film, Crumbs, another futuristic parody in which elements of the popular culture of the eighties were mixed with African landscapes. An experience that gave more than one a real short circuit as soon as it began to circulate at festivals.. With his second job, with a title as picturesque as it is radically suggestive, Llansó goes a little further. We spoke with him so he could give us some keys to this production that will be screened in Valencia this Tuesday 8/12 at 6 p.m.. within the special sessions of the 35th edition of the Cinema Jove festival.
The first thing you think when you see a movie like this (It also happened to me when I saw your first film, Crumbs), es, What strange mind has come up with all this madness?? So, first of all, I would like you to introduce yourself as director or, rather, Could you explain to us what about you or how you project yourself in this type of films that you make?.
Well it's hard to describe, but I like adventure movies and I think that is the reason why I went to live in Ethiopia in the year 2008, following the cinema that I liked, like the films of Werner Herzog or those of Jean Rouch, who also lived in Africa for many years. He also wanted to escape the vision he had of Africa as just a continent of poverty and disease.. I have always been moved by that adventurous spirit of living things a little more deeply., so I went to Ethiopia, I got a cultural scholarship at the Spanish embassy and there, in addition to discovering the real country, with all its amazing landscapes and culture, the music and the value of each region, I found two things that caught my attention.. A, all those landscapes that took you to the Paleolithic or the Middle Ages. And then the process of globalization, with all the shit and garbage it produces, all chinese objects, gluers, plastic slippers (laughter)…All that shit seemed to have taken shape there. So, I started to think, more than a series of stories about Africa, in a series of stories, in science fiction terms, about the impact of globalization on the world. And I began to find that there were many things between Spain and Ethiopia that were similar. For example, all these kinds of pop objects, but also certain power dynamics, not just politicians, also the way of acting of the world mafia, the way famous people today become caricatures of themselves… All of those things were amplified in Ethiopia, which allowed me to reflect on them.
I understand, so, that the surreal tone that your films have has to do with the absurdity that this mixture represents as an order of the world. Now that you were telling it, was telling me: Of course, So things start to fall into place...
Of course. Really all conspiracy theories are very surreal. I recently read that the president of Nigeria was trying to convince his fellow citizens that he was not a clone!! (laughter) That's in the newspaper The Guardian. From the European Union he called the population of Nigeria to convince them that he was not a clone, which was himself. Today I was reading that in Namibia Adolf Hitler has won the local elections!! There's a guy called Adolf Hitler.. It's not Adolf Hitler, Of course. The point is that, in fact, We live in this world of globalization that creates very surreal aberrations. You just have to look at the United States, ¿no? The problem is that these aberrations are, somehow, comic, but also very scary. I believe that when the Nazis came to power, You couldn't believe that grandiloquence and paraphernalia., but behind there was a very serious thing. Somehow, These moments of change are producing all these types of speeches that seem untrue, that seem staged and that interests me a lot. I have also always liked the surrealism of Buñuel and Dalí, but also from the Marx brothers, from Monty Python… I think my films are more about finding a very simple and, after, fill that whole line with a bunch of little reflections, joking, skirmishes that take you out of the plot. Thinking, For example, in Brian's life, You don't watch the movie to know where Brian is going., whether it solves your problems or not. Where Brian Goes Brian's life is the least. It is more a series of anecdotes or sketches, and my movies go there, at the moment.
You were talking and I was remembering your movie and the fact that, when you are seeing her, many times you ask yourself, And now why does this character say this?? I'm referring to that thing they say sometimes and that doesn't seem to have much to do with what's happening.. Based on that structure that you talk about and in which you support your films, and seeing the final result, Do you catch yourself doing your job??
When I make my movies, some of the scenes I write in conversations with my friends. For example, with Israel, The director of photography. They are conversations that take us to very surreal places.. We start making jokes and if we find it very funny, we usually include it in the movie. It is a kind of automatic writing (I try to stay consistent though., let there be a story). For example, An absurd joke that the movie has is that of the three ninjas, Spaghetti, Ravioli and Baltasar. Suddenly, We came up with that nonsense and it made me burst out laughing.. I liked to break that expectation that the three of them are called like a plate of pasta.. It's nonsense, But it does make me laugh or I think it has a lot of energy., we usually put it. I would say that it is a humorous-poetic language that makes you reflect on things. Or dream or, to many people, get bored, Of course. It can also happen (laughter).
We are not going to reveal the ending, but I wanted to ask you where it comes from or what inspired the title of the movie?. Was it the title that empowered the film or the other way around??
The title came because I was with my girlfriend on a trip to Almería. We visit the towns of the West [Almería was the scene of countless westerns Americans and Italians] y, I don't know why, At that time, I found it very funny to imagine Jesus Christ in different contexts.. I imagined it there, living in the west, talking about his philosophy, telling people, “don’t kill them”, “do not grieve” and, then, reflecting on the things he did wrong. And that's where the thing stayed. We left the town with these types of reflections and we got lost (laughter). Suddenly, We didn't know how to get back to the highway and, on top of a mountain, there was a Christ similar to the one in Rio de Janeiro, but in small, that was like pointing towards a place, pointing the way. We took that address as a joke, but it happened that the direction I was pointing took us to the highway (laughter). I do not know, It doesn't have any special meaning because I'm an atheist., but there I had the end: a Jesus Christ will show the protagonists the way to follow.
You said you are an atheist, but it was almost like a revelation...
Bueno, a shallow revelation (laughter) But I think that, probably, In many shallow revelations lies the key to life. I think of the Jesus Christ in the movie as a calmer guy.. If the revelations were a little calmer, everything would be better. On conspiracy theories, For example, everything has to be super-grandiose: aliens, zombies, Pizzagate [that implicated the Democratic Party in the US in a human trafficking and child abuse network]. But, what if jesus christ was a laid back guy? That is to say, if the philosophy he promulgated were a little like that of The Big Lebowski. “Bueno, nothing is really that bad. You have to take things calmly, no need to exaggerate, etc." One of my reflections on Jesus Christ was that, that perhaps I had exaggerated this whole thing about God a little, of the spikes that nail him to the Cross... Maybe, the politicians, the great speeches, they take themselves too seriously. That immigrants come, so we say: ¡Ah, immigrants are going to destroy everything! It's an exaggeration. What do we say, “Maybe drugs should be legalized”. There is always someone who answers, “¡no, because then we will all become drug addicts!” A little exaggerated, ¿no?
You were talking and I was thinking it's true that, when one of these conspiracies occurs, We think that there is a great plan behind it and, In fact, there is nothing. I was reminded of a comment by Alan Moore, the comic book writer, who did research on a work on the conspiracies that had occurred in History, and had come to the conclusion that, generally, there was no one behind and, In fact, the world was drifting.
Of course, Alan Moore, For example, are From hell It's pure conspiracy. Bueno, a kind of conspiracy inherited almost from blood, a kind of demon that manifests itself in Jack the Ripper. Yeah, I think there is nothing behind, that there are no great theories and that, probably, relaxing a little about the big theories would help us. That does not mean that there are not different degrees of responsibility in what we do.. What large corporations or a guy with more power does is not the same as what a worker does.. There are different responsibilities, but that is one thing and another to think that there is only one plan. God's plan, the Pizzagate plan or whoever's plan.
In Crumbs you took advantage of the science fiction genre to create this exploration of some of these issues we are talking about. Jesus shows you the way to the highway is based on the spy genre. Did you have any special interest? Do genres inspire you to build stories??
Bueno, I had read a lot of Phillip K.. Dick and in him there is always this conspiracy. Conspiracy is always a paranoid genre, and spy stories are a paranoid genre too, there is always someone betrayed, there is always someone bigger than you. The paranoid genre is very platonic in the sense that the truth is always hidden, is beyond. The idea, existence never manifests, You can always keep investigating what the truth is because the truth is hidden, you are a Matrix. And at this moment I was interested in doing a kind of parody talking about power, It's a dark world beyond. I started writing it after the crisis that affected Spain, of Donald Trump's victory... Somehow, I began to reflect on these great worlds of the power behind things. I remember that, when Spain was in the worst of the crisis, we thought, how did we get here? What darkness is behind? Now we are beginning to see a lot of cases of corruption, even the king, but, somehow, everything was like in the shadow. On the other hand, I was interested in how the individual is, like a romper, in the middle of that power play. I also remembered the Greek tragedies in which the gods play with the heroes. Here, instead of Zeus or Aphrodite, son Batman y Stalin y Ronald Reagan (laughter) It's a parody, but it is born from a conspiracy-paranoid structure of reading Phillip K. Dick.
It can't be because your film is dated in the 2019 and you couldn't anticipate Covid-19, but see it now and the question of the virus appears, a virus that, besides, His name is Stalin and he is coming to endanger order, makes the film have several readings. On the one hand, the presence of a threat, typical of spy movies, but also the political threat of socialism. Right now, wherever you look, The Russians seem to be to blame for everything..
(Laughter) It's true.
It's Putin, but they are the Russians the same. Are we at the same point as always, in the world of the second half of the 20th century, without having changed anything?
Good question. Well, I don't know. Of course, there is always an enemy, ¿no? There is always a great theory. In Jesus shows you the way to the haighway There is an equivalence with all this. I don't want to do spoiler, but Stalin is not who he seems to be and the USSR is not what it seems, but here the world of power is unified. Somehow, I wanted to speak from a more anarchist point of view. I don't consider myself particularly anarchist., but I always have a suspicion towards power. And that suspicion makes me unify all spheres of power. For me, power is always suspect, always involves some corruption. In that sense, I didn't want to put the USSR as the enemy, But what I wanted was for people to reflect on this unification of power, which also affects the United States, and who do we think is the enemy, It's actually a cover for a deeper enemy..
I was watching your movie and I remembered Tim Burton's movie about Ed Wood, or even Wood's own cinema. You have already commented on certain references by Buñuel, but I remembered Wood in his way of working with the actors or actors he chose. But, Of course, Ed Wood could be called a bad director who directs bad actors, but, in your case, everything is deliberate.
Bueno, I suppose those who are terrible directors of actors, they would also say, “I did it on purpose” (laughter)
(Laughter) Yeah, but in the case of your movie, when you see her, It seems to you that it is a kind of response or response to the rest of the film industry. If your movies work it is, in part, because they are confronted with a way, we could say, “normal” or “normal”, orthodox, of making movies. Is there an intention in this?
Of course, It doesn't just come from directing actors., but of the script and the staging. In this movie everything is dubbed, For example. In that sense, The explanation for why actors behave this way comes from the intention of creating characters that are more iconic than real.. It comes from comics and from creating almost cartoons, more than credible characters, of flesh and blood. For me, In recent times, cinema has moved too much towards ultra-realism and the capacity that a more symbolic cinema had has been lost.. But by symbolic I mean in the sense of a [Georges] Méliès in trip to the moon, For example. A more innocent cinema. I like that the actors are not so believable. It seems to me that the creation of the cinematographic world must be credible, but they can be grotesque or bent, as Godard did in At the end of the getaway. Through that dubbing, Jean-Paul Belmondo is creating great phrases, but always with that rebellious attitude, like punk. I like the ability that dubbing gives to elevate the energy of the film.. And then, I also like that the characters are more people than characters themselves.. All the characters I try to find must have some empathy. Even the ones that are very bad, They are bad guys, a little losers., a bit sloppy, like Batfro, the african dictator, like Stalin. Jesus Christ is also a pretty hot guy. I try not to have anything too serious about the actors.
In that context, any viewer who tries to find a story or a thread in your films in the conventional way, it's going to feel, inevitably, disoriented. in your movies, where do you want to place the audience? Where do you want to direct it??
Bueno, the stories, both in Crumbs like in Jesus shows you the way to the haighway, they are very simple. I don't think they feel lost there.. It's a story like Odyssey, in which a hero leaves home, undergoes a series of adventures and, in the end, must return home having transformed. The complication comes, probably, in the tone. That's where, maybe, people feel lost because, instead of playing a more “tele-novelesque” structure, as we are used to, where the director closes in on the story itself, I touch a more energetic structure, where the director does whatever he wants. I think the thing is whether or not you feel that freedom., in the fact that anything can happen in every scene. I would read it more from Terry Gilliam's point of view., of the Marx Brothers, of Land as you can, etc. Nobody complains that in Land as you can things don't make sense, but they are like that. It's that way of making humor. Maybe you don't laugh as much, but be open to ideas entering your head in a similar way, to that creative freedom. Of course, If that bothers you and you try to find the story and make sure everything is very measured, you're going to be disappointed.
The challenge is to allow yourself to enter a different chaos when watching or reading stories..
Open to spontaneity. And here there will be people who find it funny and others who don't.. Bueno, well that's life. (laughter) Mira, the other day, I gave an example to my students.. Have you ever played chess with a five year old child?? What they do is that, with each piece, they invent movement. The horse, instead of moving in an “L”, they move in “C” because they feel like it. You tell him, "but, bueno, the horse moves in “L”, not in “C”. And maybe they will answer you, "yeah, but it moves in “C” because it is the “C” of horse.” That idea of changing the rules, but with a certain spontaneity, Many people may find it funny and others may get bored after ten minutes.. Bueno, well it's acceptable.
In your two films there is a recourse to certain elements of pop culture. In Crumbs you turned to the figure of Michael Jackson, For example, and here other elements appear. But not only that, but you convert subjects like the figure of Stalin himself into that pop language, which we have already mentioned, by George Bush padre o Robert Redford, mixing everything with the aesthetics of the first video games of the years 80. Where does that love come from?? Are they elements that enter your story or do they appear in a natural and spontaneous way??
I found the decontextualization of different objects and people when I lived in Ethiopia. You tried to find local artists and it was impossible, but, instead, you found the most normal objects in the strangest places. For example, I was in southern Ethiopia filming a documentary, having a drink at night in a bar, and a kind of disco was set up. It was in a kind of tuque, one of those clay houses. It was a place that looked like it was from the Middle Ages.. And what do they click? Bomba by King Africa. The next day, we enter one of these tucules and we see that, inside, It was covered in newspaper images of Dubai skyscrapers.. I asked the owner why he had that.. “Well because they are pretty.”, because I like to feel like I live like in a skyscraper”. I like all this decontextualization of objects that acquire a new meaning. It was the premise of Crumbs. What would happen if in three thousand years the objects of our civilization were found?? How would you understand who Michael Jordan or Michael Jackson is?? They would have no reference in the same way that we cannot interpret splinters from the Paleolithic. We can say that this was used to eat, but maybe it was used to wipe your ass. (laughter) These types of things interest me because they create a very great creative freedom.. It is about picking up any object, persona, political or meaning and subvert it or give it another random meaning that is connected with something poetic, but make you laugh. A little bit we return to the automatic writing of the surrealists: it is about creating new meaning by destroying the meaning of the object. Objects are full of meaning. Nobody buys a Ferrari if it has no meaning. You do it because you think it's nice, because it gives you status or because it gives you a feeling of power. That's the Ferrari, not the car. All objects have a meaning associated with them regardless of what they are because, but, We wouldn't mind eating with a plastic fork or a silver one.. But eating with a silver one is better because it has a meaning. Break that meaning, change it, makes people quite nervous. One of the shorts we made was about a clone of Hitler who goes to the bars in Addis Ababa where people laugh at him. You change Hitler and turn him into some kind of dwarf who goes to bars in Ethiopia. Whether you want it or not, there is a comparison with the original. That comparison makes you think.. “Bueno, If Hitler came to Ethiopia, how would you organize the holocaust?“But if nothing works in Addis Ababa.” (laughter) That makes you think about German society and its high technology., and high-tech responsibility in relation to extermination. The distortion of meaning always makes you reflect.
I would like you to tell us a little about your relationship with Daniel Tadesse, the leading actor in your two films. How did you know him? What is the artistic relationship you have with him??
I met him in Ethiopia, In the year 2008. The first time I saw him he was at the National Theater of Ethiopia playing the friend of the boyfriend of blood wedding. And of course, Daniel playing the avenger, trying to hunt down the runaway lovers... People were laughing their asses off. I told myself, How is it possible that Lorca has become such a Tarantinian thing here?? There we became friends and he started acting in my short films and then it occurred to me that he should be the protagonist because he has a very unique personality.. [Daniel] It has many qualities that I like. He is a fragile person, but very intelligent looking, that creates empathy. He is brave as a person, but also in the movies. That combination of fragility and bravery, of insight, I like. I think it speaks very well of the tragic hero, of the antihero. It's not Leonardo DiCaprio, is someone who is closer to what I understand a person to be. Somehow, I would be more connected to the hero of The sweet life, that hero who tries to hook up with Anita Ekberg, but he's just a poor bastard who wants to belong to the upper class.
With respect to Crumbs, and despite that aesthetic that you are looking for, it seemed to me that Jesus… It has a somewhat more refined production. The special effects have that B-movie touch, or maybe further down the alphabet (laughter), but, despite that, It is noted that the production has a formal refinement, more careful. I don't know if it has to do with your learning or maybe you have had the opportunity to work with more resources. I know that part of the film was financed through crowfunding.
Yeah, we had more budget because, in addition to the crowfunding, we had help from the Estonian government, from an English producer and a large post-production house. This film involved a lot of people.. Outside of money, there are still people who make movies for love. We add very powerful people. Part of the team that made the special effects have done Harry Potter y Mission Impossible. They made us some effects on their weekends. We also shot the film in different formats and in several countries and that gave us the opportunity to travel and find different actors and locations.. It is a production about five or six times larger than Crumbs.
Your two feature films, although they are two different stories, They have very similar elements in terms of their conception, its structure, the type of humor, etc. To finish, I wanted to ask you where your cinema is going in the future.. Are you going to continue exploring this line or do you think, at some point, you will change registration?
I don't know what I'm going to do, the truth. Now I have the opportunity to make another movie, but it is a film that is more anchored in more real characters. The movie is going to be science fiction, but it will have a more classic structure in the dramatic sense. And this is because the producers I'm with now believe that a more conventional dramatic arc is more commercial.. I really like the story we are making.. It will surely be filmed here, in Estonia, next summer. Y, I don't know, maybe it's shit (laughter) or maybe I'll discover that that's the way to go. But if, this story is less comic, less cartoon and more flesh and blood. I don't have them all with me, but we'll see (laughter).
