A Disappointing Continuation

A Brilliant Conflict

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

It's 1622. Spain is ruled by King Philip IV. Diego Alatriste (Viggo Mortensen) leads his feared Spanish soldiers on a raid in Flanders. He returns to Madrid and gets caught up in an assassination attempt with Gualtiero Malatesta. His young charge Íñigo Balboa is taken with Angélica de Alquézar. He and his men are sent back to Flanders.The plot is jam packed and disjointed. It's hard to follow. It skips time. The story simply doesn't flow. Apparently, this encompassed several books and it shows. The actors are game. There are compelling fighting scenes. It's just a pain to keep track of the characters and their story lines. Without the flow, it's hard to feel for these characters. It has to be much more compelling to do a smaller part of the story and let the sequels come if they're able. This is good for fans of the books but I doubt others would find this compelling.

Alatriste(Mortensen) is a Spanish mercenary in the country's 17th century imperial wars. There are various on-going rivalries, love affairs and the like, though you'd be forgiven for having trouble following it all(even knowing the historical background for the events... heck, a bunch of it doesn't even get closure). While I haven't read the novels this is an adaptation of, I understand that this takes several of them and attempts to squeeze everything therein into one movie(as has been done with similarly poor results before and since... rather than accepting length differences and changing things to keep the core themes intact). So the 139 minutes of this(with credits... without, it's 131) seems as though it should be significantly longer, like a mini-series, and it feels unsatisfying, not to mention it taking its sweet time(and not enough of that is spent letting us connect with the characters, understanding their motivations, sharing their passions... ultimately it becomes boring on account of that). With that said, it has high production values all around. Locations, costumes, props... showing the dichotomy between the nobility(clean, prettied up) and the soldiers(filthy, in worn-out clothes). The action scenes(fencing and shooting, mostly) are tense and fast-paced, taking place in diverse places(on a ship, in a city, etc.) with a richness of detail, the one unrealistic one being thrown daggers penetrating clothing and flesh with ease. Battles are chaotic(Yanes can be counted among the numerous directors have taken lessons from Saving Private Ryan), brutal, bloody, disturbing, gripping(one sequence is genuinely claustrophobic, and their atmosphere is always suffocating) and often up close and personal. The DVD comes with trailers for this, 2:37, Alpha Dog, Lonely Hearts, Ask the Dust, Bobby and The Wicker Man. There is a some sexuality and a little topless nudity in this. I recommend this to fans of authentic war-dramas. 6/10

I welcome any feature film which brings History to life. 'Alatriste' presents us with a series of historical tableaux taken from Velazquez and other artists. King Philip IV, his chief minister Olivares, the poet Quevedo, the Surrender of Breda and the Battle of Rocroi are faithfully recreated from their paintings. However, accurate recreations of the past do not always produce a great film. This expensive and lavish work is not mediocre but lacks a dynamic story-line.Many Spanish reviewers believe that it was a mistake to compress 5 novels into one film. I agree. The film is strangely episodic and a little shallow in its depiction of both its characters and the large canvass of history over which it ranges.'Alatriste' can be translated as 'the gloomy one', a name presumably chosen by the author to reinforce the idea of a 'Golden Age' Spain already showing signs of decline. The tenor of the film is unremittingly gloomy with rather too little Spanish sunshine.Spanning the period 1622 to 1643, we are shown a decadent empire already conscious of its own decline. Towards the end of the period Olivares declares, "The honour and reputation of Spain are lost. All is misfortune." The poet Quevedo opines, "We are now a country of beggars who were once the centre of the universe." Is this historically accurate? Were leading Spaniards of this period so acutely prescient that their new-found wealth and power might be slipping from their grasp? Was Golden Age Spain such a self-consciously dark and anxious place? Or is this retrospective anachronism? The film certainly presents a critical view of the period. It is scathing about the Inquisition and its power – several characters become its victims. Leading figures such as the King, Olivares, Secretary Alquezar, Chief Inquisitor Bocanegra are all depicted as intriguers. Alatriste serves their nefarious goals - including an attempt to assassinate the Prince of Wales and a scam to divert gold from paying soldiers to building palaces.The Alatriste character is a Common Man acting as a foil to the system he serves. Dour, uncommunicative, no deep thinker, he ventures few opinions about the world he inhabits. Two decades of loyal service eventually lead him to a verdict on his sovereign, "There are kings and kings and this one should govern." He becomes increasingly aware that he does not serve the best of masters. He is also dismisses the idea that things could be better for ordinary people under different rulers.Alatriste shows his own independence and sense of honour in this murky world by failing to complete his role as hired assassin and by purposely appearing before Olivares in worn boots. Alatriste is loyal to the Spain he serves but he does not always obey orders. It is Alatriste's decency and honour which makes him a hero. Decent acts include adopting the son of a fallen comrade and visiting and kissing the syphilitic love of his life as she nears death. He does not kill all those he beats in duels. Olivares calls him, "brave, discreet, trustworthy." Alatriste is deferent to his social superiors – secular and religious -throughout the film but over time he becomes less so, eventually shouting at Olivares. This (productive) outburst is a metaphor for the rebellions that have broken out by 1640. He is useful to those he serves but cannot hope to enter their ranks or sup at their table.Class distinctions are underlined when an aristocratic comrade from the Flanders war rejects Alatriste's claim that they are 'brothers' –"Not even in combat are we equal. God did not want it so." Brotherhood in arms is not allowed to cross class barriers. Likewise, our low-born hero has the title 'Captain' only in honorary recognition of his fighting qualities. He has no rank. Alatriste's and Inigo's loves both reject them in favour of greater social status and material security.Religion suffuses life. Catholic anti-Semitism is reflected in a vulgar reference to the size of Olivares' nose, an allusion to his 'tainted blood' as a descendant of converted Jews. The poet Quevedo calls him "a tyrant and descendant of Jews who are now sucking Spain dry." One soldier tells another,"You Portuguese are all half-Jews." Inigo is quite happy to say he has been killing heretics in Flanders. A wintry day in Madrid is 'as cold as a Lutheran.' Alatriste calls the 'black sun' of Flanders, "a heretic sun." Interestingly, several characters facing death disavow their belief in the Afterlife. Fear of the Inquisition kept such scepticism in check but it surely existed in the Catholic world.The fighting qualities of the Spanish infantryman provide a straw of pride for modern Spaniards to clutch at. The Battle of Rocroi shows pike-fighting contemporaneous with battles of the English Civil War depicted in the film 'Cromwell'. The siege of Breda shows trench warfare and tunnelling to undermine enemy positions which is comparable to World War I fighting. The initial Spanish raid to spike the Dutch cannon is also very instructive. Soldiers are badly fed, clothed and paid. Booty incentivises. Stoic pride and bravery underpin Alatriste's world.'Alatriste' is remarkably similar in structure to 'Goya's Ghosts' (2006) which is set in Spain two centuries later. Both films have a fictitious central character and story line set against real historical characters and events and over a similar time span. Both are lavish in their depiction of the past and both refer to the work of contemporary artists. Both damn the Inquisition as a monstrous instrument of tyranny. The Catholic Church was, surely, the world's first totalitarian organisation.'Goya's Ghosts' is a better film simply because it is held together by a central narrative. Its characters are fully developed and it is far more focused on the historical tale that it tells. 'Alatriste' is disjointed and produces a rather flat emotional effect. It is less than the sum of its parts.

The film could have been good. When you find an epic film produced in Spain, you expect it to be lacking in production design. You'd be wrong. This film looks grand and excellent, with action scenes that can rival Hollywoods and sets that will blow your mind away. But it tries to cover 6 books in 2½ hours! The result, as you can imagine, is a lot of incomprehensible jumps.If you're interested in history, it is worth a look but otherwise you might as well skip it. They should have adapted 1 or 2 novels. Not all 3. The result is that none of the characters get any depth and except for Alatriste, no characters are that frequent. Not even his comrades or his lover get that many scenes and they are spread out across the film.Very little is explained. The best example of this is the transition from a scene where Alatriste helps his young apprentice up from a shore to the final battle. Just like that, with no explanation, we're thrown into a battle in Flanders between France and Spain.I very much enjoyed the action scenes however. Very well made. The film was also very gritty and brutal. A testament to this is how many people in this film are stabbed in the throat, or across it. A knife is an effective weapon that can quickly kill a man in a most undramatic way, but it is hard to portray this effectively on film. But here, the filmmakers do not try to glorify their action. They just show it as it could have happened in real life.