Alejandro G. Calvo: “There is an evident lack of commitment to original ideas in the North American industry”

Alejandro G. Calvo: “There is an evident lack of commitment to original ideas in the North American industry”

The acclaimed film critic and SensaCine director prepares the premiere of his next “A Quemarropa”, along with an exclusive interview he will do the following day in London.

               Alejandro G. Calvo talking on a Sensacine video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRyiZfEKUqg

How did you go from being a chemical engineer to a film critic?

From a very young age, I knew I wanted to be a film critic. With the money I earned from my first job, I would spent it on movie books, or ‘VHS’. Then, I would pick up some cinema magazines and pasted the critics published in them on the ‘VHS’ covers. But many movies didn’t have a critic, so I wrote them. That is how I started, and I think I’ve never said  that before...

Is it difficult to stand out in your field, sharing your opinion about a film?

If criticism is only an opinion, you fail. It’s not important to stand out, what matters is the work and that it is well done. I've never stood out until now and I've been very happy, as I am now. I make the critics for me, but in the case of the videos, it is a job that requires half the work on both sides [referring to Verónica Melguizo, his video director and editor]. In addition, you reach many people who answer at the very second, and it is impossible to please everyone. If I lied for that purpose, my work would be meaningless. For example, because of the last Star Wars film critic, people continue to insult me, but I will not lie to change that.

Do you think there are economic pressures or have you experienced them?

Once, a purchase order from an advertising company arrived, saying that they wanted me to do a video critic of one of their films, trusting that I would like it, and I told them to reject the offer. We do not sell video critics to distributors. I had never had any problem talking about a movie in a positive or negative view: there are no economic pressures. In the media, I think sales must go on a way, and content on the other. This is one of the worst things of my job.

Alejandro G. Calvo on a video critic about Joker: http://www.sensacine.com/noticias/cine/noticia-18579451/

Are you able to watch a film without analyzing it?

No. This is the year in which I have seen more movies since my son Nicolás was born. I could say I have watched nearly 300, and it is the year in which less series I have seen over the past eight years.

Do you think that sequels try to imitate the facility to follow series, and its success? 

There is an evident lack of commitment to original ideas in the North American industry.

[While drawing on a blackboard a tree-graphic] I love what Marvel has done. That is to say, you have a trunk in which there are the films they begin with [he writes Captain America, Hulk, Thor, Iron Man …] and then some branches begin to appear, where the characters are already known, and from where new branches come out [The Avengers, Black Panther, Captain Marvel …]. And at the same time, it is a universe shared with the Netflix series. Everything is interconnected, and with this Marvel creates a massive urgency on us to see the new movie, but for that you must have seen the previous ones. The model is fascinating, but if cinema becomes only this, it could be a problem. Everyone is looking for this model, because it is a money maker; After all, cinema is an industry. DC has tried and failed, but Fast & Furious or the saga of The Conjuring are moving on that way. Basically, this model is like the concept of the series, but algebraically speaking, much more ambitious.

Moreover, it is said that the series are the cinema for lazy people. I don't share that opinion. The bad thing about the series is that it takes 13 hours of your life, and not only that. I also have to convince my wife, because I do not arrive at the office and start watching Western movies [laughs]. I have very little free time, so when the children go to sleep, I can finally watch TV, and if my wife wants to watch something else, I have to wait for her to fall asleep. However, I am lucky, because she lets me see many stuff.

With “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”, how do you see the evolution of Tarantino’s way of narrating?

[As he draws the structure of the movie]. It has a long first hour in which nothing happens: it is a photo of the Hollywood of the 60s, and the camera flies between the characters. It is the love for narrating, and Tarantino had never done that before. Then, he draws three narratives in parallel: two forward, and one back. That is, it goes from a linear portrait to three simultaneous stories in the form of a flashback, following all the characters. Later, there is the impressive sequence in the Manson ranch, where everything is concentrated on a scene of horror and suspense, and then it goes to a very crazy and fun ending. The structure is Tarantino, but what happens is that the first hour attracts a lot of attention.

It is important for a filmmaker to evolve. There has been an evolution that started in Inglorious Bastards, referring on how the characters connect with each other, since they don't speak like the Pulp Fiction gangsters anymore.

Does the perfect film exist?

No. For me there may be a perfect movie, but it is impossible for the 100% of the Humanity to agree on that. For example, The Searchers, The Godfather: Part II ... There will always be someone that dislikes something, and the other way around. A phrase I heard from Julio Wallovits says: "There is no museum that houses the perfect movie, as there is a museum that exhibits the metre." Cinema is free, with many perfect movies of many types, sensibilities... And there may be imperfect movies that are even better than the "perfect" ones.

How would you compare films between each other?

I don't compare movies, as each one deserves a particular approach. You value it not according to your expectations about it, but rather to the expectations that the director would have had at the time of doing it, and if he has fulfilled them or not. Each movie is valued based on itself. I am now doing the list of the best movies of this decade and I have put The Lego Movie in the top 10 [laughs]. They are compared when they have an obvious and significant comparison between themselves, like when they are from the same director. With the last film of Scorsese, you have to talk about Casino, Goodfellas ... If I take out the deck of classic cinema, it ends with contemporary criticism. It is the duty of film critics to have enough knowledge to make that assertion.

Does the budget condition the quality of a film?

Assuming that it is the quantity the director required, no. Satyajit Ray, for example, has done wonderful movies filming towns and its people. I do not put barriers with the budget of a film, or its nationality... African cinema, excepting Morocco and Egypt, is absolutely unknown, so, as with Bollywood, you have to be prepared to watch it. I like to see the cinema as a whole and I try to see all and be interested in everything, regardless of the rest.

You have interviewed very important personalities, such as Tarantino, Joaquin Phoenix... How do you prepare yourself for that?

Once the person agrees on doing the interview, your duty is to do it in the best possible way. Normally, I do not get nervous, but very excited and I enjoy the moment. What I do is to prepare it: I open a notebook and then, nothing comes to my mind. You have to transform the lack of ideas into, at least, 10 questions, for which you have 5 minutes. If they are 20 better, from which you choose the three best. The first question is everything: the person must like it. When they come to the set here, it is very fun, and now we are going to start doing live interviews again. There was a time when we would put them karaoke, and when the cast of Baby Driver came, Edgar Wright, Ansel Elgort and Eliza Gonzalez sang. We all ended up crying of laughter and it came out in all the American newspapers and media. It was a show that we did not repeat so strongly. What really fascinates me is to sit with a director that tells me things without nonsense talking, as Almodóvar, Tarantino, Michael Mann or David Cronenberg have done. With the actors it is different, because it is auto-promotion, and you do not feel that they are answering anything. Let's see how it goes tomorrow with Chadwick Boseman ... [laughs]. For example, the interview with Joaquin Phoenix was pretty good, although he is a very weird guy.

During an interview with Tarantino about his new film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRpcD1o-xKs&list=PLXDak_Kd_Ash9QVrQDBjoxm_PG4AsTnwv&index=21

If you had the opportunity of living inside a film, which one would it be?

In a Western movie [laughs]. Not really, as I would feel stiff because of the horse riding. It would be the opposite of the violent movies that I like. When you are young, it is easier to think that you want to be a goonie [smiles].

As for my favorite movie, I always say Taxi Driver, the one that got me into all this. I don't know if it is in fact so good, because each year I discover 10 masterpieces, but yes. I had never been asked this... Well, I’m going to say in a calmed film where you sleep a lot.

Let’s talk about cinema and music...

They are absolutely inseparable, even if there is no music, because the lack of music already implies something. There are different ways to use music in the cinema: we must distinguish between diegetic and non-diegetic music. How a director uses a type of music changes the value of the scene. For example, Scorsese always uses songs from the time in which the movie takes place, or Tarantino, who chooses songs from other movies. It has to do with film editing, with the meaning. If the classic cinema was always a great orchestral composition accompanying some images, in the “Nouvelle Vague” what they do is to cut the songs in half, or that the song continues, having finished the shot, etc.