The film is titled Exhaust and finds Mario Casas in a heavily guarded prison. As Rodrigo Cortés (Orense, 1973) himself admits about his latest film, it has “all the prison tropes.” The poster referring to Life sentence“the brass cup hitting the bars.” “The hanging from the window with sheets and clothes tied,” continues the filmmaker. “And the tunnel, only in our case it is not to get out of prison, but to enter it.” This slight nuance completely marks this adaptation of a novel of the same name by Enrique Rubio published in 2022. It resembles a typical prison fiction, but from an inverse sense. The desperate goal of Casas’ character is to remain imprisoned. Totally deprived of his freedom.
The bet is risky. But Cortés, eternal sympathizer of narrative challenges – almost 15 years ago he shook Hollywood with his decision to have Ryan Reynolds locked in a coffin for an hour and a half, to Buried—, he hugged her in a big way. He knows that confusion “can end up being joyful,” because “many of the things that are seen and perceived through such a bizarre character are so overwhelming that the brain must manage them through laughter.” Of “precisely enjoying the inversion of rules.” Showing off his characteristic oratory, Cortés gives us the perfect description for his sixth feature film: “It’s like a prison movie that you hold by the ankles and shake until you get a confession.”
To begin with, it is inevitable to ask yourself about the presence of Martin Scorsese as a producer.
Scorsese is the reason I make films, you can imagine what it has meant to me. We met at the Princess of Asturias Awards, when he was awarded the Princess of the Arts in 2018. They asked me to have a public talk with him: he had seen all my films, and we hit it off. Some time later, when we finished with the assembly of love in its placeI sent it to New York. He was enthusiastic about the film and we talked a lot over Zoom during the confinement period. Then he asked me to send him my next script. Honestly, I thought he was just being polite and didn’t send him anything, but weeks later they called me from his office to demand the project. This time I did send it to him and a few days later he wrote to me saying that he had never read anything like it. He was enthusiastic about the script and the tone. He assumed it was going to be difficult to finance, and offered to do whatever he could to make the film exist.
You haven’t shot a feature film in Spanish since Contestantyour debut. Has it been some kind of return to your roots?
Exhaust is related to Contestant for its senseless nature and its Kafkaesque vibe. It is also true that one’s homeland is the language before the place: films like Buried, Red lights either love in its place They were mostly filmed in Spain, but they were spoken in English. Rolling in your language, and especially material with such a delicate rhythm, allows you to have control of every syllable, every nuance, every inflection in the music of the language. It helps a lot that you do it surrounded by a cast like this, of course.
Has the dedication of Mario Casas, who has worked so hard to leave behind his teenage idol figure in recent years, helped?
He is a great actor who has been shaking off prejudices through hard work for some time. And a kamikaze who seeks risk with the same relish with which others avoid it. I sensed that he was at a point in his career where he was willing to jump from the eighth floor without looking down and without a net.
It is curious that his character is called N, a single letter, just like the name Hache of the character who made him famous in Three meters above the sky.
And it’s even more curious, because in the original script I called him H. I had not seen that film and for me it was a way to bring him closer to Kafka, so instead of calling him K as in The process I gave him the H for “man”. Of course, when I learned the name of one of the iconic roles of his career, I decided to call him N. But I left the H as a trace on his ID number.
Exhaust adapts a novel by Enrique Rubio, for whose work you feel a great affinity…
We met long ago, when he saw Contestant and he wrote to me excitedly because he had connected a lot with the film. He in turn sent me his first novel, I have a gunand something similar happened to me. Read Exhaust not a year and a half ago (when it was published) but ten years ago, in its first draft. But the original version of Exhaust It is very different. It is the story of a boy with Asperger’s syndrome who has been raised by his parents on the margins of society, in seclusion, with his own code of conduct and values. When he comes of age and goes out into the outside world, he feels overwhelmed by all these stimuli and seeks to return to mental seclusion.
We tend to think that freedom is related to doing what you want. But freedom is surely more related to responsibility
Rodrigo Cortes
— Filmmaker
As you see, they are very different stories. In fact, I told him that it seemed unadaptable to me because the result would be very essayistic, almost an entomological treatise on the human condition. But the premise seemed too powerful to me: the counterintuitive driving force of someone who longs to go to prison, perceiving as a reward what for others is a threat or a punishment. I told Enrique that, if he gave me permission to betray the novel, I believed I would be able to honor it and respect its DNA. He saw the movie for the first time recently and it was very nice to see his reaction. It was that of a spectator who sees how the seed he sowed ten years ago has come to fruition in the most unexpected way.
Here in Spain another writer, Santiago Lorenzohas also spoken about this desire for isolation, to get away from everything, in his novel The disgusting ones. Why do you think we are so anxious about making decisions in this society?
It actually happens in any society because it is part of the human condition. We tend to think that freedom is related to whim, to the multiplicity of options, to ultimately doing what one wants. But freedom is surely more related to responsibility. One is free if he accepts the consequences of his actions. One is only free if one takes charge of one’s freedom, and therefore we often prefer not to be. We often prefer that someone else make decisions and reserve the possibility of judging or complaining. We don’t want the responsibility that freedom brings.
This existentialism does indeed lead us to Kafka, but in Exhaust It embraces a surreal tone that makes one think of José Luis Cuerda. Do you think it is inevitable to come across Cuerda if we intend to take a look at surrealism from our country?
I suppose that absurdity is our way of being realistic and Cuerda is indeed part of a tradition that begins with Quevedo, continues with Valle-Inclán, then with Rafael Azcona and Eduardo Mendoza, etc. It is rooted in our subconscious. And tone is indeed the key Exhaust. It is the most delicate element to handle because it always moves on a very unstable edge. I have had the opportunity to see the film several times in fortunately packed theaters. At first there is absolute confusion among the audience, trying to interpret what is in front of them. Then the first laughs begin, without anyone being quite sure if they should laugh or not, and at a certain point they feel that the film gives them permission to laugh. And the laughter begins.
TO Exhaust He is very concerned about the individual as a rebel against a series of ideologies that the State or the system would issue. Here I also thought of Kubrick and A Clockwork Orange.
I often spoke of A Clockwork Orange during filming, for different reasons. One was the scale. In Kubrick’s filmography there are giant films and middle-class films such as A Clockwork Orangewith a more contained budget and at the same time a great creative ambition. It is also an apparently difficult film because it imposes another reflection on free will. It is not easy to digest because Kubrick does not give a clear solution to what he shows and allows the viewer to decide how he feels about what he has just seen, and how he deals with all those contradictory and ambivalent impulses. And yet it is a very easy film to watch.
It is a film to which 100 Nobel Prize winners and 100 bakalas would react the same. Because it hits them in similar emotional zones, deep down. It is also an unrealistic film, with a fable tone that inhabits its own world. All these elements were interesting to me because I always conceived Exhaust like a big question that does not give an answer or that offers multiple answers, all of them possible at the same time. And that respects the viewer, allowing each one to decide how they feel about what they have just seen. Coming out one can say that N is a poor victim. Another will say that he is envious, because many times he would have wanted to get away from his responsibilities. And a third party would perhaps say that N is a complete idiot, who does not want to take charge of himself and wants others to do so. And all three will be right. Many things are true at the same time.
Despite its rarity Exhaust It also “looks like” a commercial projection film. And that reminds me of something you have mentioned on other occasions, the capacity that commercial cinema has to surprise depending on the money it has cost, depending on what the budget and its industrial context allow. I remember you mentioned Oppenheimer as a meritorious case.
Exhaust It should have cost three times what it cost and it has been made with the money that could have been financed, of course doing all kinds of juggling so that the public does not have the slightest feeling of scarcity. But there is an almost axiomatic law, indeed, that says that the more money, the less freedom and the more freedom, the less money. We have found a balance, actually very delicate. Because all movies are themselves statistical improbabilities. So I can only live the existence of Exhaust gratefully.
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