Reviews

The 'conjuration' in the title refers to a real event: the political assassination in Madrid of a high-ranking official in the Spanish court in 1578. A plaque marks the spot today in the exact corner of the street where it happened.

The script begins with the scene of the murder and then takes us back to recount the events leading up to it. There are many characters involved, and although at the beginning it is not clear why we are being introduced to so many, eventually they all find a reason for being there, from a priest who ends up a the centre of the investigation, to a young 'morisca', a half-Moorish girl who is plucked from the streets to serve in a rich house.

The film is not very imaginatively shot and some of the expository dialogue is quite clumsy: some actors seem to be there just to summarise in words what the atmosphere at the time was, which is always a pitfall in historical films. Many actors means many lines of dialogue and this film -not short, about two hours and a quarter long- is full of conversations, often stilted and stagy. There's a lot of standing upright with broody brows with the purpose of looking imposing and serious, in bunches around the king or other important characters. It is not a slow film, however, but it's not a swashbuckler either. In fact, the one time when we are given a good old sword-fight, it goes so lamely clichéd, with stalls of fruit and ceramic bowls being turned upside down in a street market and a couple of unrealistic fight moves, that it feels utterly wrong.

In its favour, the costumes are great and many scenes are shot at El Escorial itself, the palace-cum-monastery where king Phillip II pored over the business of governing the world's leading superpower. Some of the actors are quite good in their roles, and this despite a cast mixing Spanish and foreign stars. I would single out for praise Julia Ormond, who looks not a day younger than her 43 years old. With her ageing beauty, she brings alive one of the most fascinating characters of her time, the eyepatch-wearing princess of Eboli. Joaquim de Almeida is also very good as the vigorous secretary Juan de Escobedo, acting his scenes with much-needed energy. It is a pity, though, that the role of Jason Isaacs, Antonio Pérez, fizzles out somewhat towards the end, when he should be one of the most memorable characters, according to the real story. Juanjo Puigcorbé plays a more ironic and even affable Phillip than the sombre and adust quasi-monk we have seen in other portrayals. And I personally took a liking to Jürgen Prochnow's character, a local 'alguacil' (sheriff) who becomes involved in the matter both through his job and his private life.

The question at the heart of the film is: did King Phillip II order the dismissal of one of his own officials? This has been much debated by historians, and the evidence is not conclusive. It may have been in his favour because of political rivalries, but the public backlash would have been uncomfortable (as it in fact was), even for a monarch as self-assured and with so great a grip on power as he happened to be. This matter is one of the central charges against him laid out by the so-called 'Leyenda negra' (Black legend), with which other European rulers and political enemies sought to discredit him in public, in particular in the Netherlands and Britain. Whether the film takes a stance on it or not, you will have to see it.

In the twenty years since he became a published writer in 1986, former Spanish war correspondent Arturo Pérez-Reverte has seen his name credited in ten films or TV series, the best-known among them being 'The ninth gate'. And almost each time the response has been disappointment for fans of his books and casual viewers alike. Most times, either the book or the hype promised more than the screen finally delivered. 'La carta esférica' is not an exception to this rule.

Pérez-Reverte's stories of his trademark tired heroes aim to be adventure tales with canonical presentation, plot and denouément, and at the same time heavy in characterisation effort, with detailed descriptions of what goes through the mind of the leading character before he acts next. Typically, a book needs to be found, or a map, or a painting, or a crime needs to be solved, and there we go, following our grizzled hero in the adventure.

Basque director Imanol Uribe was attracted precisely to this type of classic adventure yarn when reading the novel: a sailor anxious to get back on a ship after a forced spell on land because of a legal problem finds the chance to do it, with a twist: there's a map (the nautical chart of the title), a beautiful and determined woman, a discovery to be made and a couple of bad guys. Obviously he reacts like 'gimme a break, this type of thing just doesn't happen any more...', but of course, there wouldn't be a story if that was the whole story. Classic Saturday-in-November, rain-outside, after-lunch-film fare.

And that's all there is, as far as the film is concerned. The characters then go from A to B to C etc, as the discoveries in the script dictate, but at the end of it all, the result is not terribly interesting. For starters, the aim of the search is nothing Earth-shattering, like the Holy Grail or the Ark of the Alliance, and to continue, the glue that holds the tale together, which is the obsession of Coy, the sailor, with Tánger, the woman, is largely lost and diluted.

One of the main criticisms made about this film is that it is dragged down by the use of voice-over (a resource which, if well used, produces marvellous results -witness Martin Scorsese's 'Casino' or 'Goodfellas', for example-, but if not well handled becomes a burden on the picture). Its use was an attempt to include that other driving theme of the novel, (apart from the voyage-and-discovery element), which is the age-old motif of the sailor tempted by the voice of a siren, a woman wiser than him who becomes to the mariner 'all women who ever lived'. Pérez-Reverte is a keen sailor himself, frequently going solo on his sailboat along the Mediterranean sea by whose shores he, and his character, Coy, were born. So, the sea, 'old and wise', the women who live by it, also growing wise after frequently waiting for their men gone to war since the times of the Odyssey, and the sailor who is brave when faced with danger and battle but often lost and rudderless in dealing with women, all form a part of the same canvas in which the story is set. Of course, this is quite interesting when read, but difficult to work into a basic film of X marks the spot, in particular when the original story tends to be a slow-burner to start with.

Carmelo Gómez is quite good as Coy the sailor, but Aitana Sánchez-Gijón had a tall order to serve, playing a woman who, without being extremely beautiful, toys with men more or less as she wishes. You do need to believe she's one to be able to pull that off for the script to work. The rest of the very short cast (pilot and two bad guys) are adequate.

Shot in Costa Rica in 1988, 'El Dorado' is one of a rare breed, a Spanish film about its own role in America in the 16th century. However, this film doesn't tell a story of glory and conquest, but one of failure and slow descent into madness.

The story is about an expedition down the Orinoco river in 1560, undertaken by Spanish soldiers with the aim of finding the famed land of El Dorado, where gold is supposedly plentiful. I suppose that it is not a spoiler to say that the place doesn't exist and that what the expeditioners find is something completely different.

The film is 142 minutes long, and not exactly action-packed, so a prospective viewer should realise that the leisurely pace is meant to reflect the utter boredom provoked by the long and uneventful days in the journey, but these 'dead' days, as in many expeditions, are punctuated by moments of high intensity and tension in which the travellers will have to react to the challenges thrown at them by the jungle... or by themselves. In this sense the film is a study on how to face (or not) insurmountable obstacles in extreme conditions, in particular when greed, pride and lust are thrown into the mix.

The filming on location does half the job for the film-makers. The river and the jungle are like one additional character, and one can feel the stuffy Old-worlders slowly stewing under their heavy shirts and armour as the days pass. I find a bit of fault with the way Lope de Aguirre, the main character, is played. The film goes for understated menace from a quietly unscrupulous man, which ends up adding to the slowness of the film. Of course, that's the director's choice, but I feel that a bit of energy and feeling of danger coming from the villain of the piece would have been welcome.

All in all, it's an effort that meant a lot for Spanish cinema in the 1980s, having been filmed only four years before the 5th centenary of the discovery of America and just a decade into full democracy after the Franco dictatorship. But it if has to be enjoyed, one must come with 'Apocalypto' Mode firmly shut off.

'Alatriste' is a film based in a series of novels by Arturo Pérez-Reverte (five until release time, with a sixth published four months later) which is hugely popular in Spain. But undoubtedly it was the news that Viggo Mortensen was to be playing the title character what put the project onto the international radar.

In fact, had it not been for Mortensen's acceptance of the role, the film would not have been made at all. Director Agustín Díaz Yanes, who also adapted the script, condensing the five novels into 134 minutes of action, said from the beginning that the film would be made only if a major movie star fronted it, and the search soon took him beyond the Spanish frontiers. To his credit, Mortensen accepted to follow up his stardom-achieving role in 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy (the clinching conversation for 'Alatriste' took place during the Berlin premiere of 'The return of the king' in December 2003) with a daring move that raised many eyebrows: starring in a non-English language film, and speaking his whole part in Spanish with his own voice, whose accent he had to change from the South American he knew since childhood to the Old Castillian his role demanded.

The film follows 40-something Diego de Alatriste y Tenorio through 20 years of his life, from the wars in Flanders in 1623 to those against France in 1643, when Spain, under king Philip IV, accelerated its decline from its position as the world's dominating superpower. The film is bookended by two spectacular feats of arms taken from each of these conflicts, but in the middle we get to know the man under the wide-brimmed hat and the long cloak. When not in the thick of the action, he has to make a living hiring his skills, and those involve killing for a few gold coins back in the dark corners of Madrid or Seville: not for people of his type the kind of glamourised glory depicted in victory-celebrating murals. Mortensen's portrayal - raspy voice, cold-eyed gaze and menacing professional manner - is every bit what the role demands, and his performance is one of the triumphs of the film.

However, he is not all there is, even if the hype has made it seem that Mortensen was all that mattered in the film. He is surrounded by a crew he has celebrated as being as fine as any he's worked with anywhere, and a cast of the best 'hidden' talent Spain has to offer (no Antonio Banderas or Javier Bardem here). Accompanying the 'tired hero', as he is described in the books, we have Unax Ugalde as Íñigo de Balboa, the young buck Alatriste raises in lieu of his dead father; Elena Anaya as Angélica de Alquézar, the scheming ladyservant of the queen; and Ariadna Gil as 'la gran actriz' María de Castro, Alatriste's luscious love interest. They form the heart of the film from the perspective of personal relationships. In none of their hearts love for each other is the only ingredient by any means, and negotiating their twists and turns can be as dangerous as avoiding sharp and pointy steel objects in the street. In fact, they don't stay sheathed indoors all the time either…

The rest of the painting is full of extraordinary nuances and details. And 'painting' is the right word, because none other than one of the greatest masters of the trade ever, Diego Velázquez, has been the visual inspiration for the film, with his grave palette of black and brown colours, a world away from the splendour and shine of previous and later historical films. Spain was wealthy on the outside but poor and rotten on the inside, and his paintings show this, as does the film. The novels mix the imaginary characters hitherto mentioned with real-life figures, and two of the supporting ones are brought to life directly from his canvases. These are Javier Cámara as the Count-Duke of Olivares, the mover and shaker behind the throne, and Juan Echanove as the writer and poet Francisco de Quevedo. The first one is, as can be expected, important to move the political plot forward, and the second might seem peripheral and time-consuming, but his picture and verses are in every school textbook in Spain, so for Spanish people these two play the important role of making Velázquez's paintings move and speak, bringing closer to home the other characters. It's been Pérez-Reverte's aim from the beginning of the saga to use Alatriste's stories to re-educate Spanish people in their own history, too neglected in recent years (see trivia section on this site) and this is a way of seeing what could have happened 400 years ago in the streets one can still walk today. Not for nothing the premiere was planned, old fashion style, in La Gran Vía, in the heart of El Madrid de los Austrias.

This is the first English review of the film ever written (as far as I know), fully one week ahead of the official Spanish release, so it is mostly introductory and I am not going into more details on purpose. Outside Spain, the film will be seen mostly in festivals, with foreign releases happening gradually towards Christmas 2006. Just to say that those who have read the books will find, as it usually happens, many changes among a genuine attempt to be faithful to the spirit of the original material, and that one thing you should avoid doing is seeing it under the shadow of 'The Lord of the Rings', because of Viggo, or under the shine of glossy Hollywood historical recreations full of dizzying light and colour. The scale is much smaller, the atmosphere darker and grittier, and sword master Bob Anderson, who crossed blades with the likes of Errol Flynn (not to mention humming lightsabres and Elvish-lettered weapons), has never been happier teaching people 'a matar, y mucho'.