The Serious Truth of the Conformist Rebel Spanish (or more precisely, Catalan) film underground of the late Frankist era for some reason remained deprived of the attention of film lovers outside the Iberian Peninsula. While, for example, the experiments of Andy Warhol are chewed up by hundreds of professional and not very critics, Philip Garrel and the Zanzibar association are constantly on hearing in the discussions of moviegoers, and the most advanced freaks will not fail to mention Otto Muhl and Viennese actionism - the names of Jose Maria Nunes, Pere Portabella or Alfonso Ungria will not immediately remember even specialists. Why did this happen: whether the character of this movement was exclusively parochial, whether the language of these films was too allegorical, or, on the contrary, the content was too politicized - but it had practically no influence on the world film process. While the turbulent 60s raised Europe on the rack, in Spain, for the most part, there was peace and grace, only occasionally breaking into the outside world with timid bursts of free thought.
One of them was the Barcelona School. Its representatives – Nunes, Joaquim Jorda, Jacinto Esteva – diligently followed the traditions of pop art that gained popularity in those years, adjusted for the carefully cultivated Catalan coldness and detachment, sharply contrasting with the sexual aggression of the New York original. Carles Durand also joined this school, the most famous film of which is the fantastic dystopia Libersina 90. But if his other associates in their work diligently avoided direct political allusions, carefully retouching them with layers of experimental film language, Durand went a completely different way, without any equivocals talking about the topics that worried Catalan (Spanish, European) society at that time.
Revolution, violent intervention in the social order, change in the psychology of the masses, totalitarianism and democracy, Marxism and fascism - all these characters of "Libersins" speak openly, freely, seriously and at the same time ironically. The main issue for the characters of the film (and through them for the director) is the problem of free choice. Is it permissible to force a person to think freely if he does not want to? A fantastic assumption of the plot is the creation by a group of revolutionary scientists of a special substance that, when ingested, frees his consciousness from the layers of lies brought there by the mass media. Infected with this very “libersyn” brain ceases to obey someone else’s opinion, begins to think independently and inevitably comes to the idea of the need for social reorganization. It is a matter of little to add the drug to the metropolitan gas network, so that the citizens, having breathed the air of freedom, free themselves from the stupefying effects of television, propaganda and, having thrown off the shackles of insurance policies, loans, union contributions and advertising banners, build a society of universal prosperity and prosperity.
This is where disagreements arise among the main characters. The question of the admissibility of forcible transformation of the personality becomes for them like a Hamletian dilemma. At the same time, the need for a social revolution in its Marxist understanding is not even considered (Durand here, in general, through the mouth of one of his characters, is a vulgar Marxist with the idea that the change of social formations is inevitable, etc.). But the creation of a new person in one fell swoop of the hand throwing a dose of “libersin” in the gas tank is quite different. What if that person doesn’t want to be free? If he wants to work out his eight hours, buy a beer, get on the couch and watch another episode of Broken Lantern Street? And you once - and you are free, Vasya, move to the rally of Navalny. Will he not break your whole face for this very freedom, which has deprived him of illusions? Wouldn't it be a bloody mess to go out?
And here Duran, perhaps unexpectedly for himself, finds himself close to his colleagues from the Barcelona underground, who preferred internal protest to external protest, contemplation to action, the stream of consciousness to a street avalanche. Despite the fact that his picture, unlike most films of representatives of the “Barcelona school” has a clear plot and does not avoid action (albeit very conditional), it still tends to inaction. Even if this failure leads to the same tragic results as the act. For a more vivid expression of this idea, Duran even gives the protagonist a double name: Carlos / Louis ("depending on the circumstances"). A man who has two mothers, two names and, in fact, two faces appears either as a purposeful revolutionary or as a burnt-out skeptic, forcing his supporters to burn with the flames of rebellion or doubt their own existence.
At the same time, the surrounding world is drawn by the director, albeit with very conditional rough strokes, but as disgusting as possible. Here, under the wise rule of President Sigmundus, stability, prosperity and prosperity reign. Every citizen of this wise state is obliged to watch television for several hours a day, to consume a certain amount of social goods and to enjoy the services provided by capitalist society. If this does not happen, for example, a person refuses to take out a loan or pay union fees, he immediately becomes the object of attention of a special psychiatric service, which determines the degree of illness and prescribes treatment. No repressions, no prisons – they only prevent people from turning into a quiet, obedient herd that a group of revolutionaries are trying to tear away from their hearty feeders.
But if Orwell, who without any doubt was among the inspirers of Carles Durand (along with the classics of Marxism and the utopians of the Enlightenment), the rebellion against such a system was a priori meant reasonable and necessary, then the Catalan has no doubts about its necessity, but it is reasonable. Turning a flock of sheep into wolves is a big deal. Wolves are few in comparison with sheep and it is not so difficult to feed them, but thousands of hungry cloth-hoofed people, demanding meat instead of grass - this is a real apocalypse. Wouldn’t it be better to sacrifice a couple of handsome revolutionaries so that the sheep are fed and the wolves are safe? And libersin is better to hold for kitchens, where it is great to discuss the coming fall of the regime (franco, Brezhnev, Putin, Hitler, the bald man). It is possible, of course, that such a position, hiding behind the external frond, and did not allow the Catalan film underground to achieve serious international recognition. After all, the rebels were always in honor, unlike the conformists. But not to recognize some serious truth for her would also be somehow wrong.