Alatriste Trivia
Aug. 28th, 2006 08:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wowieThe film is based in a series of novels written by former Spanish war correspondent Arturo Pérez-Reverte. He had the idea for the books when he had a look at his daughter Carlota's History book from school and saw that only one page was devoted to the 'Siglo de Oro', the years in the 16th-17th centuries when Spain was the world's dominating superpower. Carlota, then 14, helped her father research the period, and the first novel, published in 1996, was published with 'Arturo y Carlota Pérez-Reverte' as the author. Five novels have been published so far, and the film is based in the most important episodes in all of them... and beyond. The sixth novel will be published in Spain at the end of 2006, and Pérez-Reverte has said he has drawn some inspiration from the film for the upcoming novels.
Director and screenplay writer Agustín Díaz Yanes has a university degree in History and was particularly keen on this project, as historical films are not very common in the Spanish industry.
Alatriste’s main physical feature, as described in the books, are his ‘cold blue eyes’, always unusual among Spaniards, so the director, who wanted ‘a big star’ to front the cast, decided to go for Viggo Mortensen, who speaks perfect Spanish, having spent several years in his childhood in South America. Besides being an excellent physical match, Mortensen had just starred in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy and could use a sword convincingly.
Mortensen had already taken part in a Spanish film, ‘La pistola de mi hermano’, and Díaz Yanes had the director of this film, Ray Loriga, send Mortensen the ‘Alatriste’ script. Mortensen loved it and then a meeting between the three was arranged in Berlin in December 2003 during the German premiere of ‘The Return of the King’. Díaz Yanes recalls: ‘His room was a mess. We opened some wine, he took us to the premiere, went for dinner and then back to the room until 6 AM. We had a great time and everything went smoothly from there’.
Díaz Yanes was convinced that when Mortensen returned to the USA, friends and agents would try to talk him out of the project, saying it would be crazy. Mortensen has later intimated that this was what happened, but the script was ‘the best he had read’ and was very keen on doing it.
The sword master employed in ‘Alatriste’ was the same as in ‘The Lord of the Rings’, Bob Anderson, a veteran from the golden age of swashbuckling films. When he started work on ‘Alatriste’ he asked whether ‘people are going to be killed in this film or this is going to be Hollywood fighting’. He was pleased to hear that ‘habrá que matar, y mucho’ (there will be killing, and lots of it), and the fighting style was altered to reflect a dirtier, grittier, more historically realistic style.
Many people in Spain were not convinced by the choice of Viggo Mortensen as Diego Alatriste, because he was foreign, and because his South American accent would not fit his Old Castillian character. He duly travelled to Spain and started visiting several Castillian cities (among them Salamanca and Valladolid, noted by the perceived purity of their speech), in search not only of the correct accent but also of the origins of Alatriste as a character, which are left quite vague in the books.
Finally, he found a mountainous region called Curueño in the north-western province of León, where ‘I found something, I don’t know what. I went into a bar and it looked like a saloon from a western. When I came in, everything went quiet because I was a stranger. I stayed for a while because it was snowing outside and nobody spoke to me. It stuck on my mind, I came back a second time and without saying anything they served me the same thing I had ordered the first time, and they did speak to me. On my third visit they trusted me and I was a friend’. After that, he called Pérez-Reverte telling him that he had found Alatriste’s birthplace, and the writer has accepted it as a fact ever since.
During filming, Mortensen spent two hours visiting a sick girl whose dream was to meet him. This happened in Talamanca del Jarama (near Madrid, one of the filming locations) on May 31st 2005, her 11th birthday.
Around 10,000 extras were used for the film, and Mortensen often gave away bags of sweets to some of them to hand them out.
Mortensen has said that he was attracted to the parallelism between Spain in the 17th century and the USA nowadays, both being the dominant international superpowers of their day. ‘If Alatriste lived today, he would be a loyal US army sergeant who despite being a veteran of Panama and Iraq, still obeys his orders to invade Fallujah, futile as he thinks the effort is’.
Díaz Yanes has the habit of watching many other films to draw inspiration before filming, in this case making everyone watch ‘Il Gattopardo’ for starters. Besides, he has cited ‘Barry Lyndon’, ‘Braveheart’, ‘The Last Samurai’, ‘The Deer Hunter’, ‘The Age of Innocence’, ‘The Godfather’, and several Italian films from the ‘Neorrealismo’ current.
Brown and black tones are predominant in the imagery of the film, except for the female characters. Díaz Yanes says that ‘the 17th century in Spain, unlike the 18th in France of the 19th in Italy, was quite ugly’, reflecting an empire rich in lands and South American gold, but very poor socially, with enormous inequalities and an influential Inquisition.
The main visual references were the paintings by Diego de Silva y Velázquez, one of the most famous painters ever, who has cameo appearances in the books as well as in the film. His is the famous painting ‘Las Lanzas’ made to commemorate one of the feat of arms Alatriste and his friends are supposed to have taken part in, the siege of the Dutch town of Breda in 1625.
IMDb
emphasis mine
Director and screenplay writer Agustín Díaz Yanes has a university degree in History and was particularly keen on this project, as historical films are not very common in the Spanish industry.
Alatriste’s main physical feature, as described in the books, are his ‘cold blue eyes’, always unusual among Spaniards, so the director, who wanted ‘a big star’ to front the cast, decided to go for Viggo Mortensen, who speaks perfect Spanish, having spent several years in his childhood in South America. Besides being an excellent physical match, Mortensen had just starred in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy and could use a sword convincingly.
Mortensen had already taken part in a Spanish film, ‘La pistola de mi hermano’, and Díaz Yanes had the director of this film, Ray Loriga, send Mortensen the ‘Alatriste’ script. Mortensen loved it and then a meeting between the three was arranged in Berlin in December 2003 during the German premiere of ‘The Return of the King’. Díaz Yanes recalls: ‘His room was a mess. We opened some wine, he took us to the premiere, went for dinner and then back to the room until 6 AM. We had a great time and everything went smoothly from there’.
Díaz Yanes was convinced that when Mortensen returned to the USA, friends and agents would try to talk him out of the project, saying it would be crazy. Mortensen has later intimated that this was what happened, but the script was ‘the best he had read’ and was very keen on doing it.
The sword master employed in ‘Alatriste’ was the same as in ‘The Lord of the Rings’, Bob Anderson, a veteran from the golden age of swashbuckling films. When he started work on ‘Alatriste’ he asked whether ‘people are going to be killed in this film or this is going to be Hollywood fighting’. He was pleased to hear that ‘habrá que matar, y mucho’ (there will be killing, and lots of it), and the fighting style was altered to reflect a dirtier, grittier, more historically realistic style.
Many people in Spain were not convinced by the choice of Viggo Mortensen as Diego Alatriste, because he was foreign, and because his South American accent would not fit his Old Castillian character. He duly travelled to Spain and started visiting several Castillian cities (among them Salamanca and Valladolid, noted by the perceived purity of their speech), in search not only of the correct accent but also of the origins of Alatriste as a character, which are left quite vague in the books.
Finally, he found a mountainous region called Curueño in the north-western province of León, where ‘I found something, I don’t know what. I went into a bar and it looked like a saloon from a western. When I came in, everything went quiet because I was a stranger. I stayed for a while because it was snowing outside and nobody spoke to me. It stuck on my mind, I came back a second time and without saying anything they served me the same thing I had ordered the first time, and they did speak to me. On my third visit they trusted me and I was a friend’. After that, he called Pérez-Reverte telling him that he had found Alatriste’s birthplace, and the writer has accepted it as a fact ever since.
During filming, Mortensen spent two hours visiting a sick girl whose dream was to meet him. This happened in Talamanca del Jarama (near Madrid, one of the filming locations) on May 31st 2005, her 11th birthday.
Around 10,000 extras were used for the film, and Mortensen often gave away bags of sweets to some of them to hand them out.
Mortensen has said that he was attracted to the parallelism between Spain in the 17th century and the USA nowadays, both being the dominant international superpowers of their day. ‘If Alatriste lived today, he would be a loyal US army sergeant who despite being a veteran of Panama and Iraq, still obeys his orders to invade Fallujah, futile as he thinks the effort is’.
Díaz Yanes has the habit of watching many other films to draw inspiration before filming, in this case making everyone watch ‘Il Gattopardo’ for starters. Besides, he has cited ‘Barry Lyndon’, ‘Braveheart’, ‘The Last Samurai’, ‘The Deer Hunter’, ‘The Age of Innocence’, ‘The Godfather’, and several Italian films from the ‘Neorrealismo’ current.
Brown and black tones are predominant in the imagery of the film, except for the female characters. Díaz Yanes says that ‘the 17th century in Spain, unlike the 18th in France of the 19th in Italy, was quite ugly’, reflecting an empire rich in lands and South American gold, but very poor socially, with enormous inequalities and an influential Inquisition.
The main visual references were the paintings by Diego de Silva y Velázquez, one of the most famous painters ever, who has cameo appearances in the books as well as in the film. His is the famous painting ‘Las Lanzas’ made to commemorate one of the feat of arms Alatriste and his friends are supposed to have taken part in, the siege of the Dutch town of Breda in 1625.
IMDb
emphasis mine
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-28 01:09 pm (UTC)Phoebs
no subject
Date: 2006-08-28 03:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-28 04:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-28 04:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-28 05:16 pm (UTC)*cough* casting couch *cough cough*
No, no, no...I'm sure it was just normal, healthy, happy male bonding. With lots of booze. Until 6 am. I wonder if Tano got "muk a luk'ed".
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Date: 2006-08-28 05:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-28 01:43 pm (UTC)