Literature and cinema offer good examples of the desperate struggle to escape from a prison. There are masterful works like ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ and ‘The Escape from Alcatraz’… What is unusual is that the protagonist bases his existence on trying to enter it. And that is precisely what happens to N, that broken man who tries to escape pain by depriving himself of freedom, who is given life by a chameleon Mario Casas in the unclassifiable film by Rodrigo Cortés with executive production by Martin Scorsese, ‘Escape’which opens this Thursday in movie theaters. A date of days of the dead and imported Halloweens, very suitable for watching a film that, without being in the least bit horror, causes unease.
The unclassifiable thing is not something pejorative, since Cortés himself defines it that way: “It is one of our little secret prides to have tried to do something that is unlike anything and, therefore, it is natural to run out of references.” tells El Periódico. “’Escape’ is the story of a broken man who decides to get off life and that he considers he has the right as anyone to have his freedom taken away from him and to stop making decisions. “He wants to be told when to get up, when to go to bed… and when to breathe.” And what better place to find that than in prison. “With that material you can create a comedy, a ‘thriller’, a drama or ‘Escape’, which is a film that makes you laugh all the time, but always worried”, he adds.
A luxury producer
The fact that Scorsese appears as executive producer may cause surprise if you do not know the professional crush that the director of ‘Taxi Driver’ felt a while ago about Cortés’ work. “Scorsese is the reason why I dedicate myself to cinema and a reference since I was a teenager. He is the pagan god for whom he lit the candles before planning a sequence,” says the director of ‘Buried, who managed to meet him at the Princess of Asturias Awards and he became interested in his films. When he saw the script for ‘Escape’, Scorsese said that noI had never read anything similar. “He told me that he understood that it was going to be difficult to finance and he wanted to be part of it. Help it exist,” he says with pleasure.
“Scorsese is the reason why I dedicate myself to cinema and a reference since I was a teenager”
Casas found out three days before filming: “I haven’t met him. But the fact that he has seen the film, that he has seen your work, it’s like you don’t even believe it,” he confesses to this newspaper. The winner of the Goya for ‘Thou shalt not kill’ He points out that in front of his character there are “people who do not accept what he is doing, who believe that he is being taken advantage of, and others who empathize with him, who feel sorry for him, who see him as a child.” And he thinks that that is precisely the beauty of ‘Escape’: that you ask yourself things. “I find it interesting to create debate,” he adds. His character shares little with that of the homonymous novel by Enrique Rubiofrom which the film is inspired, which, to begin with, is about an 18-year-old young man with Asperger’s. “Rodrigo told me not to go there, that we were going to create our own character,” warns Casas. And that is why N is older and carries guilt for something that happened in the past that can explain many things. Or not.
the novel
“The character has nothing to do with it,” explains Cortés. “But the movie would not exist without Enrique’s novel“. The director says that he and the author of the novel are friends and that he had shown him the draft before editing it. “I liked it a lot, but it seemed to me that if it were adapted literally to the cinema, the film would turn out discursive, cold , essayistics.” The writer let him betray her and generate a universe in which the viewer would receive those same emotions, but in a “more powerful” way through cinematographic language. “He allowed me, because he knew that I was not going to sugarcoat the idea, but rather invent another universe that would be born from his own. He is another character, he has modifications, but the DNA comes from Enrique Rubio,” he insists.
In that universe, in that escape to prison, the protagonist meets many other characters. “Is like ‘The Odyssey‘, makes the simile Cortés. “Ulysses makes his journey and finds himself at different stages of his journey with Polyphemus, Circe and the rest of the clan.” They are episodic, but very important to get to know N. “They show him something, they teach him something or they try to take him somewhere, but in general they come out shorn and crazy, because N is not manipulable.” And that is the reason why they have been able to count on “powerful” actors of the caliber of Jose Sacristan (the judge), Blanca Portillo (the prison psychologist), Anna Castillo (his sister), Willy Toledo (the psychiatrist), Juanjo Puigcorbe (the prison director)…
“When you see enormous actors with their nerves and their desire, you learn even more”
“For me it has been an enormous fortune and I suspect that, in addition, they also help Mario raise his game, because an actor is only as good as the stimuli that the person in front of him throws at them,” says the director. “They make you better,” Casas admits. “When you see enormous actors with their nerves and their desire, you learn even more,” says the actor, who shows off all his acting ability. And who even dares to a jota taken from the ‘Baturro Hardcore’ video‘. “Instead of having a Vicent Minelli dream with Ginger and Fred, we do an extreme joke with the prison guards,” he says politely. A scene done in one shot without a cut in which Casas is not recognized until the camera starts to fly above him. A choreography that the actor found difficult to rehearse, but of which he is proud. “In the end it turned out well for me,” he boasts.
A Kafkaesque story
Does it all sound like Kafkaesque? It is. At a certain point, one wonders if the director wanted to pay tribute to that short film about ‘The Metamorphosis’ that he created when he was only 16, ‘Seven Scenes in the Life of an Insect’. And yes, he thought about it when he was filming with Casas in the isolation cell, huddled in a corner. “Like that insect that was played by a naked actor without makeup of any kind,” he recalls. And I also wanted to convey in some way the anguish that caused ‘Buried‘, that film in which it showed a man trapped in a coffin. “Although it’s more like the reverse of ‘Buried.’ Because that is the story of a man who wants to get out of the box. This one, that of a man who wants to go to prison. Although both are Kafkaesque,” he acknowledges.
‘Escape’ is somewhat reminiscent of what it means to travel to India. There are unique moments and also other very difficult ones in which one would like not to be there. But, even so, he believes that you have to live the experience. Because it has been worth it.
