Luis Martinez

Updated Friday, February 2, 2024-19:41

  • Review The Promised Land (The Bastard): Of the declassed and noble (****)

  • Review Poor Creatures: An exuberant, controversial and hypnotic feminist apology that goes boom (*****)

  • Interview Mads Mikkelsen, the eternal villain: "I'm good at killing myths like Antonio Banderas"

Mads Mikkelsen (Copenhagen, 1965)

is now a grandfather. Not that he makes a show of it, but if he is reminded, he smiles. Like any grandfather. "Time passes for everyone," he comments laconically at the Venice Film Festival where he has just presented

The Promised Land (The Bastard)

, by Nikolaj Arcel, a few months after he did the same at the Cannes Festival with the last and definitive installment. of Indiana Jones. Too much activity for a grandparent? "I can't say that, despite everything suffered by the pandemic, it has been a bad season at all," he adds.

It should be remembered that not so long ago and with the coronavirus in all its tragic splendor,

Another Round,

by Thomas Vinterberg, singled him out as the actor of the moment. It's definitely Mikkelsen time. And since time is probably the only argument that never ages, he remembers that 20 years ago one of his first film roles was in Spain, on the Costa del Sol to be exact. «I remember that with great pleasure. It was all very crazy and very fun. "I didn't get to see the movie until much later and I laughed a lot." He talks about

Torremolinos 73,

the directorial debut of Pablo Berger, the same one who is now traveling to the Oscars with

Robot dreams.

And he continues: «I had to dye my hair blonde and put on blue contact lenses. In one of the scenes he represented death in a kind of parody of Bergman's film

The Seventh Seal.

He was wearing a black cape and a Speedo swimsuit.

Nothing else. For some reason, another actor, who was also wearing a Speedo, and I were left alone on the set. Everyone was gone. We didn't have money or a mobile phone or a decent pint. Also, we didn't speak Spanish. I still don't know how we managed to convince a taxi driver to take us to the hotel. I have never been more embarrassed in my life. But, I have to confess, I laughed like never before. The weather, the good weather.

In his new job he dresses better. And he is no longer an unknown guy that someone noticed because a Swede or a Dane, it doesn't matter. Now, and although he tries to hide it, he knows that he is a star, a Hollywood star who lends his know-how to an independent production. «I don't reason that way. I'm not even sure what being famous means. I limit myself to working and, well, if a director or producer can use my name to ask for more money or if the fact that my name appears on the poster can make more people go to see a movie, then perfect. “It seems good to me,” says Cabal.

In

The Promised Land

he plays a downtrodden person in one of those aggressively honest roles that he is so good at. From the Viking fantasy

Valhalla Rising

(2009) to the revenge drama

Michael Kolhaas

(2013), his has been the privilege of desperate and, in his own way, very political heroes. «It's funny because there are few things that motivate me less than political cinema. And not for nothing, but politically motivated art is the most boring thing in the world. I just don't like it.

Propaganda, which is what it ends up being, doesn't seem interesting to me

," he says, takes a second and continues: "It's a trend that I've seen for some time. Before, the documentary was simply that: showing what was happening. Now it seems that what is most visible in many cases is the director's intention. And that cannot be. The message has to be a consequence of the empathy you feel for the characters. "It is as harmful to mix politics and art as it is to mix science and politics, which is what has been happening lately with the pandemic."

To paraphrase McLuhan, the message, as Mikkelsen demands of his roles, could well be Mikkelsen himself. He says that the beauty of all this (and in all this includes his work and his own life) is to never expect or plan anything. «If I look at it with perspective, I realize that I never wanted to be anything. I started dancing, but it happened out of nowhere. I didn't look for it. I remember that I got to perform in some very crazy shows in which I charged 400 dollars for 300 shows. If you look for it, it's on the internet. I am neither ashamed nor proud of it. It just happened. If I later ended up as an actor it is because what I liked most about dance was the drama, the part that forced you to interpret before just the dance itself. And that led me to the theater.

But I never really wanted to be an actor.

Nor did I set out to get to Hollywood. "I don't consider myself an ambitious person at all," he says, at the same time that, if forced, he is willing to confess one, at least one, aspiration that has always pursued him. «It is true that my great wish in life has always been to one day play the role of Robert De Niro in

Taxi Driver.

That does seem like a monumental achievement to me. How to pay attention to a hero you don't like? Fascinating".


If you ask him about his penchant for playing villains, he grimaces. The one who was James Bond's nemesis and then Indiana's rival does not agree with the typecasting. "It's not so much that as what's behind it," he responds. «If we take my character in the last Indiana, like him, he also wants a better world.

I am bad, yes, but also human.

And how does the man who shot Antonio Banderas feel? «And not once, it was twice, in the knee and in the heart.

The truth is that I regret it because Antonio seems to me to be a charming person with his feet on the ground.

It was a pleasure to work with him. Too bad he had to kill him. And if, finally, he is asked about the future, he lets the question pass. "We'll see," he says. Pause. «Let's give time to time. At the moment, I am a grandfather », he insists.