After entering the mind of an ETA member in ‘Maixabel’, Luis Tosar (Lugo, 50 years old) changes register and gets into the skin of Juan, an agent of a special intelligence unit in the midst of an existential crisis, who is dedicated to perform all kinds of jobs to maintain the fine balances that sustain power. Written by Jorge Guerricaechevarría and directed by Jorge Coira, ‘Emperor Code’ is the thriller that opens the Malaga Festival this Friday and also hits cinemas.
-The Malaga Festival opens this Friday. Are there more nerves than usual or is one already an old dog?
-Look, I hadn’t even thought about that until now, you just annoyed me (laughs). In this case, I would say that we are almost more excited that the film opens the same day in Malaga that it reaches theaters throughout Spain, which is something quite unusual. That we present it to three thousand people and at the same time it is going to reach theaters is beautiful and special.
-What attracted you to the proposal by Jorge Guerricaechevarría and Jorge Coira?
-I was very attracted to the genre, I felt like it as a spectator. I really liked the air it had and that exuded a wonderful script by Guerricaechevarría, as always, with which I have already collaborated on several projects that have always been very fruitful, at least artistically and professionally, whether they are more or less successful. But there were some specific ingredients of ‘Emperor Code’ that brought it very close to a reality that is very much ours and that I think made it very plausible for the viewer. And they also linked it to a cinema that I have always liked, with which I grew up, that spy and intrigue thriller from the seventies, which had characters with more depth. The spy movies of recent years are much more exciting, with much more action, with characters that are certainly less brainy. Which I like too, huh? But I prefer the other when it comes to seeing him, facing him. It seems to me more complete and more challenging for the viewer, who is placed in a position and forced to draw their own conclusions and think about the moral dilemmas posed by the characters.
-It’s fiction but it’s scary because of its closeness to reality.
-It is not telling any story exactly real and accurately, although it is inspired by real events, obviously. There are characters very similar to those that the viewer has seen in the news in recent times. It is a compilation of many things that have been happening, but it is a fiction created and recreated.
-If they told a real case, they couldn’t even release it.
-(Laughs) I don’t think so much, what happens is that it’s true once you start doing something like that, you should be really faithful at least to the documentation that exists. Here what is being talked about is the life of a special unit that has many open fronts and then some references are made that the viewer will undoubtedly recognize, but I think that it is more about the institution than about the characters themselves. For example, when we talk about soccer, we talk about what the institution means as such and the influence it has on our society. The reflection that ‘Emperor Code’ tries to make for the viewer is the number of things that are being done to safeguard personal or reputational interests of pillars of power in our country, which often go through the world of sports, culture and, Of course, politics.
-And always in the name of a greater good, of the homeland, right?
-Yes, that is the idea that Juan would have at first. A vocational guy, with the concept of national security in his head and whom we caught right in the middle of a crisis because he began to consider that a good part of what he is doing has nothing to do with that and has much more to do with maintaining the status quo of the people who drive.
-That is fiction, a plumber of power with remorse?
-There will be everything. If I have learned anything with this profession, it is that basically there is everything in the world and surely there will be guys who have raised and backed down dedicating themselves to the things they dedicate themselves to. Throughout my life and thanks to my profession I have had access to people who have atrocious resumes and many of them at some point have turned the tables and realized what they have done and that is terrible for a human being. There will also be many people who dedicate themselves to this and who will be like the character played by Miguel Rellán, who is clear that there is a greater good that must be achieved and the way to achieve it will be whatever it takes to maintain that balance. He firmly believes that this is the natural state of things and it has to be that way and everything possible must be done to maintain it and surely there are many citizens who believe that things have to be that way, despite everything. In reality, you want to maintain those balances when they fall in your favor, but when they don’t, that’s when conflicts arise.
-The film talks about the game of forces and balances so that everything stays the same. Everyone seems to have the rest caught somewhere and yet the system seems indestructible.
-Because I believe that there are many people working so that it does not fall apart, surely more than we think. Here we present Juan as a very lonely guy, who works in that special unit where he has colleagues but perhaps he can give a false impression that, well, there are four people working there. Surely there are many people working so that things are as they are and more so in the digital society that we have created today. We don’t even realize how actively we contribute to this being the case every day on social networks, constantly lending our data for anything and all of that is a kind of involuntary collaboration but collaboration that we have accepted as a natural thing.
-And yet, the number of conspiracy theorists is increasing.
-Yes, but they don’t do much to change things either (laughs). Being conspiracy theorist is fine, but if you don’t have an active policy on this later, things aren’t going to move especially. It’s fun, but you have to be more active. I am not particularly active in this sense but I try to observe my environment and reality and the conclusion is that those in power have it quite easy to manage the world because we contribute to it all the time, we get carried away, we do clickbait, we buy everything online, we lend our data, and it seems that we are not particularly worried about being manipulated so much.
-Are you very concerned?
-It worries me, I’m quite cautious. I don’t have social networks, I try not to expose myself too much and I try not to let my children do it, not to participate in this kind of permanent showcase in which we expose ourselves and the feeling that everything one does is public and everything is available to all the rest of humanity. I don’t think this needs to be the case, but it’s the way we’ve shaped our society and it also has many advantages, that’s true. What happens is that I have the feeling that we live a little clouded by all this, ‘blind by the lights’. Because really when push comes to shove things continue to happen in a completely analog way and people die in Ukraine because a bomb drops on them.
-Is Juan an antihero or a villain?
I think he has both. I think that the intelligence of the film is also in stating that one is not so far from either of the two things. He is an antihero because he is presented in this way within the world of the genre, in the thriller, with the classic elements of the genre, but then he is a guy who has crossed quite notable red lines of morality and ethics and who will find it difficult to amend everything that It has done wrong because it has gone over things that, in my opinion, are basic for the coexistence of human beings.
-Can the system be understood without these power plumbers?
-Man, the ideal would be that we don’t need them, but it’s a bit utopian to think that things can work like that. And then I think that in the case of the political class, the parties have a functioning that is almost like that of a living organism and, beyond individualism, of what a specific person can move for a matter of ambition or perpetuation of power, I think that the parties themselves are organized in a way in which the instinct of conservation and survival works almost as if they were human beings, with a very sophisticated self-defense system, which causes them to push forward and anything goes for be up there and handle the power.
-Speaking of plumbers, recently one left the PP between accusations of espionage. Are you surprised how quickly we turn the page?
-It is that it is the society that we have built, a society that is going at a speed that we cannot even assume. Very bizarre things are happening in the political class in recent times and we are already beginning to assume them as something that is part of the matter, when it should not be. But I think it’s a problem of information overload, that the brain is not capable of taking on as many things as they happen and then, in a sense, they’ve been lucky. The war in Ukraine has come in handy for a few.
-Part of the film has been shot in Panama City and Budapest. With covid in the environment, was it very complicated?
-When we shot it a year ago we caught a spring time, in which there was some semi-relaxation, but the filming itself is somewhat more complex now and traveling becomes more tricky. we were smaller teams, and we worked with a lot of local teams, but in any case it was a wonderful respite. I think he opens the film, opens it and gives it a category.
-Is Spanish fiction in good health?
-The health is good in general, there is a large volume of production thanks to the platforms, but the health of the cinema is a bit in question due to a basic issue that is the exhibition. We are in a complex health moment, people have not yet regained the confidence to go to the rooms. I think now we should start doing it. In September and October, we had an uptick and I think movies started to work because there was a certain sense of security, but Omicron just took it all down. If everything continues as it is now, we should regain confidence by going to see movies in theaters, which are very safe places compared to the exposure that one can have in bars or restaurants.
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