Umbral, Marsé, Beyoncé, 'Anatomy of a Dandy'
In a nervous and confused world that demands information like a bulimic looking for food, non-fiction cinema has become
a good that replaces or extends journalism
and that speaks, above all, of politics and democracy.
This Sunday's Goya Awards nominations for the best documentary of the year include two magnificent examples:
Wet Letters
and
The Year of Discovery
are films obviously made to explain who we are as a society.
There are also exceptions, films that, from the language of non-fiction, investigate the psychology of people and the mysteries of emotions.
My mexican bretzel
, by Nuria Giménez Lorang, the third Goya candidate, is an intimate portrait staged
like an old melodrama,
almost like a ballet performance.
Even more radical is
Anatomy of a Dandy
, a kind of "in search of" that at first seems like a kind portrait of the writer Francisco Umbral and which, in the end, becomes one of the most heartbreaking stories of the year.
The deepest compassion, the tenderness, the emotion of poetry, the admiration, the modesty that
greed and narcissism
produce
and, in the end, the comicality of extravagant lives ...
Anatomy of a Dandy
takes its viewers everywhere those moments to end in the epiphany of the mystery almost unveiled.
Who was Francisco Umbral?
that the film builds can be answered in a more or less complete way: Threshold was someone beaten from childhood,
socially excluded and devastated by the death of his son
who set out to overcome his grievances through literary triumph and the construction of a exhibitionist character who, in
the background, was a parapet
.
What is not so easy is knowing how to feel about this paradoxical life.
Spike's little horse, in a still from 'Anatomy of a dandy'.
"We ourselves were
not aware of the film we were making until a very late stage of editing
. Suddenly, we realized the complex character that Francisco Umbral was, of all the secrets and conflicts that had built him," explains Alberto Ortega , co-director of Anatomy of a Dandy with Charlie Arnaiz.
"So we bet on this approach to disclosure with a very clear concern: we wanted to develop this extreme character without ceasing to be attractive.
Umbral sometimes played disgusting, said things on television that today seem inconceivable to us
. But it was also It is possible to sympathize very essentially with him, to see him as a hurt and delicate person who deserves our compassion. "
"The story of Umbral transcends his character," continues Charlie Arnaiz.
"He talks about
universal themes
: social determinism, unstructured families, the metallicity of conquest, fatherhood. History leaves you screwed up but it also leaves you a residue."
Anatomy of a Dandy
has an obvious hard core, a moment in the middle of the film in which some cassette tapes are played in which Umbral is heard playing and cradling his son Pincho, who died at the age of five, with a story.
An astonishing detail:
in those recordings, Umbral does not speak with the classic Threshold diction, with that very serious voice and that slow, a bit staggering phrasing
.
Umbral speaks
normally
with his son, with sweetness and naturalness.
"And yet the child is asked 'what is your dad's name?'
and he answers 'Paco Umbral'. He knows the pseudonym and not the real name of his father ", explains Arnaiz.
The other pole of the film is another recording, part of an interview by Umbral with his biographer
Eduardo Martínez Rico
.
Success is crap, the novelist says at that moment, at the end of his life, when he has already had all the recognition that a writer could dream of.
"Success had been his great obsession," explains Alberto Ortega.
"And
his journey ended the moment he understood that success is empty
. He understood it and lived it, because Umbral died alone. Many people around him when he had power abandoned him when he was weak. He maintained his pose, his He grimaced, his voice hoarse ... But then he said:
'I have saved my soul'
".
It all sounds very
Proustian
.
In the scenes of
Anatomy of a Dandy
, the writer appears in
the silly foam of days
, in lost time.
He sings on Hermida's program, Rappel interviews him, fools around with Victoria Vera, yells at Mercedes Milá.
He goes out at night, talks about money, throws books in the pool, confesses his grudges, is feared and admired.
But, in the end, he finds some kind of redemption in literature, in writing
A Being from Far Away
as Proust writes "For a long time, I went to bed early."
What's the smartest thing a filmmaker can do with a story like this?
Aesthetize it, give it a lyrical air?
Anatomy of a Dandy
is built on an overwhelming documentary foundation.
"There is a lot of material available. The first montage we did was four and a half hours long," says Arnaiz.
Apparently, the
look
of the film is austere, journalistic.
"But, in reality, there is a very delicate balance between realism and evocation," explains Alberto Ortega.
Aitana Sánchez Gijón announces several texts
from Umbral that sound wonderful and there are some scenes in which two actors stage an interview from Umbral with their biographer.
"We doubt that part a lot but it has a meaning: this material presents the film as something close to film noir, as an investigation," explains Ortega.
We only need to talk about social classes.
A paradox:
Threshold, who was born poor and made literature with the language of the poor, was scorned by many of his progressive and bourgeois colleagues
.
His longing for recognition was too obvious, his treatment was too harsh, his literature too good.
"The leitmotif of his life was
the awareness that he was outside
. Outside the family, outside the university, outside the RAE", explains Ortega.
Deep down, his film also talks about democracy and inequality.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more
movie theater
culture
Goya Awards
literature
The Latin American candidates reject the telematic Goya: "It was all very strange"
CineÁngela Molina confesses the harassment she suffered "worthy of Billy Wilder"
CineEduardo Torres-Dulce: "The Transition had a lot of western"
See links of interest
Holidays 2021
Zenit Saint Petersburg - Real Madrid
West Bromwich Albion - Everton
Maccabi Fox Tel Aviv - Valencia Basket
Parma - Internazionale
Levante - Athletic, live