Alejandro Amenábar has just shot ‘La Fortuna’ a Movistar + miniseries based on the graphic novel by Paco Roca and Guillermo Corral ‘El tesoro del Cisne Negro’ which dealt with the political and legal mess that faced the Spanish Government during the years 2007 to 2012 with the Odyssey Marine Exploration.
The American treasure hunter who plundered a treasure of 17 tons of gold and silver coins, valued at 380 million euros from the frigate Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, which was sunk off the coast of the Algarve in 1804. After successive judicial assaults the ministry of culture managed to recover it. Amenábar, associated with the American platform AMC and Movistar +, has completed his first series and we have had the opportunity to talk with him about it.
The series bubble and the film crisis
Espinof (E): It is your first time on long-form television, how have you noticed the change in narrative, what has attracted you to tell something in six hours?
Alejandro Amenábar (AA): what always guides me in my profession are stories, with this obviously I defend the series I have made and defend the format and it is true that I a miniseries format makes it more manageable as a director, because it allows me to direct the whole story in its entirety and in that aspect I see it from an artisan point of view, because I am the one who does all the directing work, but I also continue to defend the cinematographic experience, because what else I have liked in this life is to watch movies and see them in the cinema.
(E): Now that you’ve made the leap to series, what is your opinion of the new cliché that “now the best cinema is made in series”?
(AA): The crisis in cinema has been talked about for many decades and in the end it always resurfaces. Let’s see what it ends up in, since there is an uncertainty not only regarding the world of cinema and what percentages people will return to theaters, but also in this struggle of plate tectonic platforms because obviously we are experiencing a bubble and all this boom and this proliferation of series comes from this battle that is happening between the platforms.
We’ll see what happens when all this interest ends and where this fiction business will end, but from the outset, at least from my point of view, it is exciting that there is so much interest from people in stories and so many companies that in this moment they are willing to finance them.
(E): Why now a story about international conflict? What attracted you to a project about something that happened almost before yesterday that does not speak, a priori, of any topic that is boiling at the moment?
(AA): Well, Hitchcock said that stories must contain macguffins, because what really matters is what happens between the characters rather than the event itself. The argumentative excuse of ‘The black swan treasure’ seems very interesting to me, it seems to me that it already has an entity per se, because it talks about the defense of cultural heritage etc … but fundamentally, what I liked the most about comics was that kind of vocation of permanent adventure that transmits.
In addition, after a project like ‘While the war lasts’, which was born almost from responsibility, at times a little reluctantly, because I was not very clear if I wanted to get into that puddle, suddenly do something playful, which appeals to the Entertainment seemed very healthy to me, so that was really what prevailed when I was reading Paco Roca’s work. Already when the Covid arrived, that maxim became almost a reason for being. Have fun, but above all make people have fun.
Clash of cultures
(E): ‘Fortune’ touches on common themes with ‘While the war lasts’ and the impotence of culture in times of conflict, in the face of political and economic powers and interests, which is also linked to ‘Ágora’. Can it be seen as a kind of spiritual trilogy or is it a subject that you want to return to from time to time?
AA: I couldn’t tell you, it’s certainly not premeditated, I think one pulls where one pulls, it is true that in my projects what I seek is to oxygenate myself and try to engage in course changes, but maybe it is true that the goat throw to the mountain and in the end you end up repeating yourself. I am not a person who usually talks about culture like that in the abstract, in fact I consider myself quite a pedestrian type in terms of literary tastes etc.
But in the comic there was always that idea of ”culture is our oil”, a wreck is more than money, it is the history of a country, and yes, now that you say it, more than talking about culture, I have taken several films speaking of the past, but of the past with keys to understand the future, or the present, both in ‘Ágora’ and in ‘While the war lasts’ at least. ‘La Fortuna’ made me take another look at the past of Spain, this time further back, about 200 years, and I think yes, I like to look back.
(E): There is a contrast between the work of the protagonist, gray, with that representation of an untouched, old and imaginary administration of the Spain of the ñapa and somewhat backward in contrast to the pirates and treasure hunters, full of glamor and media. Were you looking to talk about something particular by showing the difference?
AA: When you talk about two cultures, and this is something that we see much more in the series with respect to comics, I find it interesting, because I, for example, know the United States more as a person who passed by when I had to enter in contact with the world of Hollywood and yes, well, you breathe something of the North American or Anglo-Saxon culture. With ‘La fortuna’ I wanted to play a bit with light and shadow, make a bit of a fresco with different types of brush.
It would be absurd to make a patriotic series without more in which in Spain everyone does it well because we know that it is not like that, not only are we not perfect or much less and that meeting of a ministry that is shown in the series, well I have lived similar or even more chaotic moments, so the berlanguiano world is not as far from reality as we think. On the other hand, in the narrow world, I was very interested in talking about the water debate, about gun control in the United States, and the series was a perfect opportunity to reflect both worlds.
(E): In fact, in ‘La Fortuna’ the two Amenábar, the one from Hollywood, capable of portraying a large-scale naval fight scene, with the one of the smaller projects, with a relationship between the two, look good. protagonists that sometimes even recalls that of the couple from ‘Thesis’. Which way will the next go? Which of the two Amenábar will we see?
(AA): I have no idea, I am right now between the two worlds, that of platforms and that of cinema, and on the other hand I try to get something positive out of that uncertainty, because I am sure that something will end up coming out. interesting, but today I have no idea where to shoot.