Alejandro Amenábar went 15 years without making a feature in Spain, and his first such since the excellent “The Sea Inside” is notable not only for being a 20th-century Spanish history lesson, but …
Running time: 107 MIN.
Climaxing in a famous speech of protest from literary lion Miguel de Unamuno, this is a worthy enterprise that errs on the side of caution, carrying the slightly stale whiff of awards-bait cinema in which greatness is frequently signaled but inspiration somehow lacking. Though surely due a certain amount of international travel, it’s unlikely to stir the kind of critical or viewer excitement needed to make this political back-chapter enticing to audiences outside Spanish-speaking territories.
But there is little reasoning with the uneducated fascist thugs running amok in uniform, or indeed with their illustrious leaders. Unamuno finally realizes that when he demands an audience with General Franco, portrayed here by Santi Prego as a seemingly passive, even timid military careerist who’s himself terribly afraid of making “the wrong move.
While smoothly handled, Amenabar’s film is somewhat awkwardly caught between two elements. On one hand, it’s an intimate, fond lion-in-winter seriocomedy, in which a great man gone slightly crusty tries to slink towards eternity without too much fussing from his bothersome friends and family. On the other, it’s a fairly large-scale, elaborate portrait of a catastrophic historical moment when Spain succumbed to the siren song of fascism .
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